


And We Collide (Like Stars, My Love)

by aqrab



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Angsty with a capital A, Extreme Domesticity in the second half, Extreme Slowburn in the first half, F/M, don't yell at me like i was yelled at on FF lmao, i'd apologize for the length of my chapters but i do not know how to shut up, mentions of yvonne/toby and spencer/caleb throughout, spencer & tobias have emotional baggage the size of a small mountain, spencer's bitterness about hanna/caleb influences her POV somewhat, yvonne does not die (but probably deserves better than tobias in this)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 146,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23821183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aqrab/pseuds/aqrab
Summary: [Originally published on FanFiction.net]"What's that saying again? You can take the girl out of Rosewood but if you take Rosewood out of the girl, all you'll be left with is an empty shell." Spencer, Toby, and their way back to themselves and each other in five chapters. Post-6B.
Relationships: Toby Cavanaugh/Spencer Hastings
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

I.  
I know if I'm haunting you  
You must be haunting me

She moves into a grossly overpriced apartment in Chicago with walls so thin she can practically hear every single movement next door, cuts her hair in front of her bathroom mirror, goes from chestnut to caramel to chocolate, and swipes right and right and right and makes so many bad decisions she officially loses count in June.

She bursts into anxious tears over her laptop while writing job applications, drowns her sorrows in red wine, her fears in vodka and her fury in cheap whiskey that tastes like total shit. She collects parking tickets in an album as if they're precious and limited stamps from the last century, eats cold leftover pizza with anchovies for breakfast, finds an earring she thought she had lost and a spider colony she hadn't expected underneath her bed in July and sighs and then decides to ignore both.

She drinks coffee as though it's her oxygen and aggressively throws tubes and tubes of whitening toothpaste into her shopping cart every Saturday, picks up smoking just because all of her coworkers do it, joins them on the balcony to make small talk and very important _business connections_ that will surely help her get out of here someday but they never do. In September, she is already coughing her lungs out and holds her mandatory cigarette between her numb fingers during lunch break, hoping that no one notices that it's basically only a fancy accessory at this point and she laughs at stupid jokes Marty from accounting tells and talks in a voice she doesn't recognize with Beatrice from across the hall and her phone beeps with yet another Tinder notification from some guy with a beard that looks like he is hiding something in it and she thinks, _this is my life now_.

_This is my life now and it fucking sucks._

Charlotte's killer is behind bars, still awaiting trial, and -A has mysteriously vanished, gone without a trace, and Mary Drake is actually Jessica DiLaurentis or Jessica DiLaurentis is actually Mary Drake, who the hell knows, and she is here in a city that is slowly but surely sucking her soul out, and she is stuck in a job that feels like a cage and her life is one big mess.

So much for happy endings.

But she is coping well. She _deals_. That's what she does. She deals in the mornings, bare feet gliding across the floor, mindful not to step on the black skirt she had thrown there the night before but not bothering to pick it up and put it away either. She deals _perfectly fine_ , thank you very much, during the day, tapping her fingers on her desk, at times along to a melody she cannot hear, reading and writing e-mails that have all started to sound the same. Her own personal _Groundhog Day_. Welcome to hell. She deals with it in the afternoon, working overtime and never getting paid enough, and on Instagram, Mona is constantly posting photos of her numerous trips to Shanghai, Zurich, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, and Spencer merely stares out of her teeny tiny office window where she can _almost_ make out a patch of beautiful baby blue turning into a soft orange behind the gray of the bank building that is blocking her view, and she nods, satisfied, and thinks to herself, yeah, it's not fucking Osaka or Paris but it's not that bad either. _It's not_.

She deals at night, too, eating takeout for dinner and watching Netflix shows about corrupt rich people working in corrupt rich people jobs and _maybe_ her apartment does feel a little too big sometimes and her bed is cold and empty when she finally lets sleep win the war going on inside her caffeinated body, and _maybe_ she is still waiting – hoping? – for the girls to actually remember their _don't be a stranger_ promises although it's been months but she deals. She is dealing. She is fine. Her life is a little messy and not as flawless and smooth as she had foolishly assumed it would be but she is _fine_. She copes. That's what Hastings do best. Even when they suck at everything else.

That is until, in a cruel twist of events if she may add, November rolls around and she finds herself perching on the sofa in a pile of this week's mail, wearing an old Georgetown sweatshirt that is silently begging her to have mercy and finally cremate it.

Now November is a beautiful month; she'd always thought so. It's cold but not _too_ cold yet, just slowly preparing for the harsh and vicious winter December and January will bring. Brown leaves gently swaying in the wind and abruptly ending their little dance by falling to the ground. Hot steaming coffee that somehow tastes even better when consumed inside while the rain is pitter-pattering in the background. November is indeed beautiful...and, what do you know, it is also the month of her and Toby's anniversary. Strike that. It _was_ the month of her and Toby's anniversary – that ship has sailed a long time ago, of course, hit an iceberg or five along the way, and then drowned faster than the Titanic without even giving them both enough time to adjust.

 _If_ she believed in fate – and she is Spencer Hastings so no, she does not – that particular day combined with that particular letter would have been absolutely nerve-racking.

Unsurprisingly and not at all fate-related, there is a logical explanation behind all of it that she finds out straight away because she is Spencer and that's what Spencer does. Toby had (she likes to picture him doing it very hesitantly and nervously but that part she doesn't know for sure) given the invitation to Emily in May. Then Emily, not being able to reach Spencer ( _correction: not wanting to get in touch with Spencer_ ) and get her new address, met Aria for a brief brunch date when they were both in Philly. Emily then presumably said something along the lines of, "I'll be in Argentina for the next few months, could you make sure that Spencer gets this?"

And then Aria being Aria had completely forgotten about it until she ran into Spencer's mom in Harrisburg. And what happened next, her mom says on the phone after Spencer frantically calls her and demands answers in a _slightly_ hysterical voice, is that there was _just so much going on with Melissa that I didn't think of sending it to you until now._

So, in a cruel twist of events, the fucking wedding invitation she was supposed to get in May, which most likely would have had a completely different effect on her mental state, because in May her life wasn't like _this,_ eventually reaches her on the sunny and bright morning of November 6th.

And if she believed in fate, she would have taken that as a big fat sign from the universe to fix the big fat mess that is her life. If she believed in fate, you see, she would have bought herself a new fancy dress in red to put Yvonne's white to shame and then she would have actually shown up at the reception, making sure that everyone and their mother knows that she is an ex, no, no no, that she is _the_ ex, that's right, She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. _I almost had his baby, what about you?_ If she believed in fate, she would have stopped for a second and tried to figure out whether the foul-tasting feeling currently boiling inside of her is envy or jealousy (or envy or jealousy or envy or jealousy); she would have stopped and attempted to untangle the knots in her stomach.

But she doesn't believe in fate. She believes in coincidences. That's it. And she firmly believes that November 6th is just a day. A regular day. A day like any other. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't _have_ to mean anything. He is happy with his soon-to-be _wife_ and the _house_ he had built for her with his own hands and the army of children they will have running around in the backyard in a matter of years, playing tag and soccer and whatever it is that kids do, the memories of his ex-girlfriend just another boring topic that will accidentally come up during Cavanaugh clan breakfasts.

 _Oh, honey, I forgot to tell you. I found this old scrabble board in the attic_.

_Weird. I meant to throw that out years ago. Just put it in the trash where it belongs._

_Oh, Officer Toby, you are so smart and so handsome. Let me give you a kiss to show you how much I love you and prove to you that you made the right choice and that this ex of yours was never meant to be the one anyway._

_You're so right, sweetheart. I forgot her name, too. And her face. It was Samantha, I think._

Sighing, she massages the bridge of her nose, shakes her head, rolls her eyes. Fate doesn't exist and the wedding invitation is just that. A cheesy wedding invitation. He is happy and so is she. Most of the time, at least. And although envy (jealousy, envy, jealousy, envy) apparently isn't an emotion she can easily shake and drown in red wine, vodka or cheap whiskey, she does find out that letting go of it is a gradual process that involves standing on the fire escape, eyes kind of red (from _coughing_ ), and blowing out smoke heavenwards. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

 _Rest in peace_ , she thinks, toying with her lighter between her fingers and scrunching up her nose at the taste of nicotine. _Rest in peace_ , she repeats and imagines a small grave in a location that vaguely looks like the lookout point back in Rosewood. _Here lie the remains of our relationship and our love and everything that we used to be. And my hopes and dreams that maybe one day-_

She shakes her head again, cuts herself off, starts chewing her lower lip. _Rest in peace_ , she muses silently, _I didn't know a cheesy wedding invite could be a lethal weapon but here we are. Thank you, everyone, for showing up. We are gathered here today to mourn a part of me that I will never get back. It's only fair, I suppose, since every guy I do fall in love with ends up with dead eyes and a heart so hollow that I can hear my own cries echoing back at me when I beg them to stay._

She sighs, throws the cigarette butt out of the window, sighs again. _Rest in pieces,_ she thinks angrily as she walks to the kitchen, grabbing the half-empty wine bottle from the coffee table on her way, _I hope Yvonne knows_ I _taught you how to do that thing with your mouth and I hope it makes her sick_.

And, no, it's definitely not jealousy. She figures that part out later while she holds her phone in her hand, trying to make out future _Mrs. Cavanaugh's_ profile picture on her private Instagram feed. It's not envy either. She doesn't look that good in white anyway. No, she is _bitter_. This is bitterness. She is extremely bitter. But she is fine. A letter is a letter is a letter; she knew they were engaged and a wedding is what typically follows an engagement. This isn't news. She's fine. She copes. She _deals_.

She deals well in the mornings, getting out of bed and staring at her reflection in the mirror, resisting the urge to cut her bangs and shave her hair and rearrange her face and shed her skin and grow new one so that her body can become something he has never touched, not with his eyes, not with his hands, not with his tongue.

She deals during the day, getting a raise a few weeks later and pats on the back because she is _such_ a team player and _so_ passionate and _so_ incredibly hardworking, her coworkers could learn a lot from her, and she asks herself why she still isn't happy.

She deals fine in the afternoon, first getting rid of Mona who is in Moscow now, more successful in every part of her life than Spencer will ever be. Then blocking Hanna who hasn't spoken a single word to her in over six months and she doesn't know why but a quick glance at her feed makes her suspect that the reason for that starts with a "C". Aria has to go, too – Mr. and Mrs. Fitz are _so_ in love in all of their photos that it makes Spencer want to throw up all over her keyboard. She hesitates on Emily's profile until she sees Yvonne's comment under one of her recent pictures and it's most likely a very petty move on her side but the little heart emojis make the decision that follows much easier than she thought it would be. She forgets about Ali for a tiny second and then the blonde uploads a selfie Spencer doesn't even look at before she is gone too.

And then, finally, sweet silence and even sweeter relief as she leans back against her swivel chair and exhales loudly. All traces of Rosewood are officially out of her life. Toby and Yvonne and the girls and every single last video and photograph she took there erased from her phone. Gone. She lets her gaze wander, looks at the building outside her office window and the gray building looks back at her and she wonders, _so why the hell am I still feeling like this?_

She deals at night, too, when she is in Tinder Jasper's apartment – _Jas, 28, I ain't a hipster but I can make your hips stir_ – as one quick hand sneaks beneath her dress and he touches and gropes her over her bra, his tongue spelling the alphabet against her neck and collarbone. She deals and she copes and she stares at the wall opposite from them where Tinder Jasper has various old guitars on display although he had casually admitted earlier that he doesn't know how to read let alone make music. She deals and she copes and she thinks, holding back her laughter, _my ex-boyfriend is getting married in February and I can't even manage to make a decent guy be genuinely interested in what I have to say for more than thirty minutes_.

Back home, she feels miserable. The window is open in a halfhearted attempt to get the constant cigarette smell out of her living room and she is shivering, shaking, and part of it is probably the hot tears of frustration she is trying to swallow but she stubbornly tells herself that it's merely the cold and nothing more. The milk is spoiled. Her half-eaten muffin on the countertop from that morning doesn't look too great either. She has six unread mails from work she was supposed to answer hours ago. Tinder Jasper, as it turns out, has already blocked her, effectively letting her know what this date actually meant and it's not surprising but it _hurts_. Multiple texts from Aria are accusingly glaring up at her as her finger slides across the screen and she can't even decipher one word because her vision is getting increasingly blurrier by the second.

And if she believed in fate, not that she does but if she did, she would have wiped her eyes, and wiped them again and again because the tears, they won't stop; if she believed in fate, you know, she would have foolishly gone into her contacts and searched for his number and then texted him something immensely stupid like, _I know that I shouldn't be doing this and that it's unfair to you and it's unfair to Yvonne and I don't know what all of this means and whether it's just loneliness and bitterness and my shitty life speaking here but can you please wait? For me? Wait until I've found out? Wait until I'm one-hundred percent sure that I'm not only doing this because I feel like everything is going downhill? Wait until I'm ready to let you go and let you move on and be incredibly happy with someone that isn't me even though I expected you to be fine with_ me _moving on years ago? And, look, I know I'm a terrible person and it's six in the morning and I sure as hell know that I'm not easy to love but god, you're the only one who always made it look that way_.

But she stops herself before she can type it out and instead writes, _Hey._ _Congratulations! I finally got the invitation the other day. I don't think I'll be able to make it though. Do you guys have an Amazon wishlist or something?_

Ten minutes later, he replies: _Thank you. No, we don't. I'm sorry I have to ask…but who is this?_

Fate is bullshit.

She doesn't answer.

And then she stops dealing and starts crying instead.

* * *

It goes like this: he finally proposes to her on a cloudless night near the construction site of the still unfinished house, unceremoniously falling down on his knee after a semi-romantic dinner date in Rosewood and then showing her the sparkling jewelry like in a silent religious offering. At once, she gasps and covers her mouth in a mixture of innocent shock and wonder, gazing down at the very same black velvet box that had been burning holes of uncertainty in his pockets for weeks but that's a detail she of course does not know and he will not tell her. The moon shines her gorgeous light upon them, wrapping them in a thick blanket of dark blue and white, as his lips start moving and delivering the very same poetic speech that had been burning holes of guilt in his mind for days and he thinks that she deserves better than _this_ , much better than _him_ in fact, but when she whispers her timid response and then clears her throat and repeats it over and over, her steady voice gradually growing louder and louder – _yes, god yes, Toby_ – his brain goes numb and shuts down and his arms snake around her petite frame seemingly of their own accord, pulling her into his embrace, an unexpected surge of warmth, love, gratitude and relief (and maybe some quiet doubt) immediately spreading in his guts.

When the rain suddenly starts pouring down anyway, all impressive lightning and thunder, expertly ignoring the weather forecast and everything the app on Toby's phone had so wrongly predicted about this evening, they quickly find sanctuary in his trailer and celebrate their past, their present and the surely future yet to come. In-between rounds of overzealous love-making, she lies next to him on her stomach, admiring the shiny ring on her left hand, and the thin, white bedsheets are uncomfortably sticking to the sweaty skin of his back as he lies with her…lies _to_ her.

"What's the deal with Spencer and her friends?"

Yvonne's hoarse voice is what eventually breaks the serene silence they had managed to slip into some five or six minutes prior and if she notices that his abrupt response to her curious question is awkwardly shifting against the mattress, and he is certain that she does, she makes sure not to call him out on it. It's not the kind of post-engagement conversation Toby would have personally gone for and he thinks that it's definitely not the sort of pillow talk one does typically participate in, period, recently engaged or not. Whispering about their pasts, thoroughly exploring, naming and then exorcising the ghosts and demons of failed relationships, broken hearts, ugly mistakes that happened _because_ of them and then people that unfortunately happened _to_ them, had never been a source of conflict between him and Yvonne. His girlfriend – _now fiancée_ , he adds silently and ignores the tiny pang of guilt dancing through the halls of his heart – isn't the jealous type. He still remembers the time when they had just begun dating and all he could talk about was everything he did wrong with Spencer, everything he could have done better, everything he should have avoided doing, everything he should have done instead, and he also remembers Yvonne faithfully listening to every single word coming out of his mouth and cupping his cheeks and looking at him, looking right into his soul, and telling him that it's okay, that the same thing wouldn't happen to them, not ever; that he could go on and on and on if he wanted to because she didn't mind, because all she really wanted to do was figure him out, understand him, understand how the little boy from the picture she had found in his loft had gone from that to the man standing in front of her.

Still, like everything in life, that too had passed; he eventually did stop _going on and on_ about Spencer and their past relationship because one day, he woke up and there simply wasn't anything left to say anymore, nothing left to rewind and relive and rewrite, and Yvonne eventually stopped talking about _the_ ex-boyfriend that had shattered her big, beautiful heart into millions and millions of pieces too, although both of their names – _Johnathan and Spencer, Spencer and Johnathan_ – would often remain an unspoken part of the countless conversations about their future, lurking right around the corner of the wall of their conscious, safely hidden in the shadows of their pain. A small ache at times, a faint itch at others, a numb echo almost always. Like a phantom limb they had gotten used to but never quite managed to fully forget, no matter how much they tried and no matter how much they did not.

That is the tricky thing about wounds you won't stop picking at, about wounds you can't and won't stop touching and scratching. About all those tiny, tiny cuts you refuse to give time to properly heal because late at night, when the past catches up with you and you're lying wide awake in bed, you can't help but run your fingers along them, constantly wondering _what if, what if, what_ _if_ and constantly trying to convince yourself that _it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter_.

That is the tricky part about scars that run too deep to just shake them off: they never truly fade away.

"What?"

Yvonne cocks her dark eyebrows at him. "Don't what me," she says, sounding patient yet firm. "A week ago, you ditched me to go be with Spencer. If you think I'm just gonna play stupid and forget what happened because you proposed to me, you really shouldn't have proposed at all."

Shaking his head like a wet dog, he sits up against the headboard, pulling the sticky sheets with him so as to cover himself. "No, that's not why I proposed and it's not what it looked-"

"Then tell me what the issue is," Yvonne interrupts him as she sits up as well, clinging to the sheets around her chest. She puts some distance between them, a few inches or more, almost as if she is making sure that their arms and legs aren't touching, and he can't tell if she is doing it on purpose but he notices and it stings.

"I can't."

"You can't or you won't?"

"I _can't_. I'm sorry," he repeats pleadingly, trying to reach for her hand and hold it in his but she angrily snatches it away as though she thinks he might burn her if he comes too close. He flinches. "We've been through this. Please. I told you the truth. It's not my—it's not something that concerns me directly. It's something that involves Spencer, yeah, I'll admit that, but it's also something that involves her friends. And I just can't-"

"Yeah. I get it. You just can't tell me." She snorts. "If it's not something that concerns you, that concerns us, then why are you willingly getting involved? You're not the only cop in Rosewood."

"They're my friends."

With a prolonged eyeroll, she proceeds to climb out of the bed, grabs the peach-colored silk robe hanging over the back off the footboard and ties it in the front after putting it on. "They're _your friends_ ," she echoes thoughtfully, thunder and lightning still going strong outside and now awakening in her eyes too. "Remember the leak? The leak about my…that came from your _friend's_ house. And yet here you are, still _friends_ with the same people and still putting your _friends_ over me. Still putting your _friends_ and your _friends'_ problems over our relationship."

His heart clenches.

"No. No, please, Yvonne. You have to-" He struggles to get out of bed as well, holding the sheets around his middle after scanning the floor for his pants and failing to find them. "It's not like that. It wasn't them. Believe me, if it were, I would _never_ -"

"I believed you when you first told me. Without question," she merely cuts him off once more and shakes her head. "And I believed you last week when you said that you had to go because something important came up but right now I'm wondering whether I'm too stupid or if I just love you too much to see what's right in front of me."

He takes a step towards her, slow and cautious, and his heart is beating in his throat and in his ears and his mind is racing and he just wants them to stop fighting. That's all he wants. He just wants them to stop fighting and go back to bed, wrap his arms around her and hold her until she is fast asleep, the look of betrayal in her brown eyes fading away, the weight of her sadness gliding off her shoulders.

"What are you talking about?" he asks her softly. "I swear I'm telling the truth."

She plops down on the chair by the kitchen cabinets, her hands neatly tucked between her knees. She looks tired, utterly exhausted even. He feels the same. "You've been acting weird lately," she says with a frown that is mostly directed at the beige carpet covering the entire floor. "You said your…your _last_ relationship fell apart because of communication issues and you said you wanted to do better this time. And we have. We were doing great. And now _she's_ back and…I just feel like you changed."

"I haven't changed," he says.

"No but you _have_ ," she responds and gives a heavy sigh. "Suddenly, there are all these parts of you that I don't recognize anymore. And they're different than the Toby I know. You're avoiding certain topics completely. You're avoiding _me_. You just…keep taking off. And you're only ever giving me half-answers to questions I deserve _real_ answers to. So what's going on here? What is this about?"

"I don't know where you're going with this. Or what you're implying," he replies, helpless. "I swear it's nothing. I swear I haven't changed. There was some…stuff going on. When we were all teenagers. And now the same stuff is happening again and the girls can't go to the cops and since I was around the first time, they asked me for help but I—I promise, I'll stop. I never wanted to make you feel this way and I swear I'll stop. I'll call them tomorrow morning and tell them that I'm out."

"What _stuff_?" she questions sharply.

When he doesn't answer and merely stares at his feet, she heaves another sigh and says, "I told you about Johnathan. I told you how I let him walk all over me for months. _Years_. And I told you that I'm not that girl anymore. I'm not the kinda girl who's gonna make you choose and _beg_ you to pick me."

"Choose between what? Between who? I _love_ you."

Unexpectedly, her eyes shift and she is staring right into his blues all of the sudden. "I'm only gonna ask you this once. Did you propose to me because you wanted to convince me that your behavior doesn't have anything to do with Spencer?"

He sinks down on the floor in front of her, feeling the heaviness of her words somewhere in his stomach like a relentless punch. "No. That's not why. I bought _this_ ," he says, thumb running over her ring gently, prepared to take his hand away if she wants him to, "I bought it ages ago. I've been meaning to do it for a while. I just couldn't…I don't know. I was scared you'd say no. I was scared you'd say it was too soon or something. I proposed to you because I wanted to. That's the only reason."

"Okay," she says quietly, accepts, nods, agrees. But her eyes are still holding his determinedly when she asks something he hadn't been prepared to hear at all. "Did you propose because you wanted to convince _yourself_ that your behavior doesn't have anything to do with Spencer?"

Her words before had felt like a punch. Swift and effective.

Her words _now_ feel like she, very intentionally, aimed and shot twenty hand-picked arrows at the barely healing scar he had been persistently scratching, and then twisted them round and round…

He blinks. "No."

…and round and round…

" _Oh my god_."

…and round and round…

"Oh my god," she says, again, covering her mouth like she had earlier but now her face is crumbling and it's not a smile she is trying to hide, not tears of excitement and joy. "Oh my god. You hesitated."

"I didn't hesitate—no, Yvonne, please listen to me-"

"You hesitated." She struggles to push him off. "You _hesitated_. And I was-I was thinking…I thought I was overreacting but-"

" _Listen to me_."

And with that, she suddenly falls silent, looking at him, a tiny speckle of hope warm and alive in her beautiful eyes still, like she is waiting for him to fix it, like she is waiting for him to offer an explanation that will successfully wash everything away, that will wash away all of his sins and his mistakes, that will get rid of demons in their closet and the ghosts in their bones. As Mother Nature continues raging on outside the trailer, he looks back at her with his hands in his lap, and he thinks that he ought to let her go, that he ought to let her move on because she deserves more than this. She deserves to see his entire soul, his entire being; she deserves to hold his entire heart in his hands, not just little fragments he is ready to give her. But that's the funny part, the selfish part, the incredibly unjust part of it all: he can't. He doesn't know how. He loves her; all those tiny, tiny fragments of his heart she is keeping safe inside her palms are covered in her name and her name only.

Deep down, he knows it's not enough for her. Deep down, he knows it's not enough for him either. Knows that it's not perfect. But he wants it to be.

"Look. Having Spencer back in Rosewood has been…it's been confusing," he begins and lowers his eyes when he hears her draw in a shaky breath in preparation for what is to come. "We never really talked it out when we broke up. You know that. And seeing her back here, in this place I share with _you_ , it's been…I can't describe it. It made me think of everything that happened and it's really just…it's been on my mind a lot. She's the only person I've ever been with besides you."

His eyes land on the engagement ring she is twirling around her finger.

"I learned a lot from her. I learned what it feels like to be loved and what it feels like to have your heart crushed because of it. I learned what it feels like to be forgiven even when I don't deserve it and I learned what it feels like to forgive and grow from it. I learned how to love unconditionally—I learned how to love _you_ ," he says earnestly. "I wasn't lying about that stuff from high school and I promise, I _will_ tell you. I can't right now but I will. And maybe you were right. Maybe part of my recent behavior is connected to that and part of it is connected to Spencer's return but you have to believe me when I say that there isn't a choice. You're the only one I wanna spend my life with."

He knows it's not perfect by any means but he desperately needs it to be, desperately wants it to strike roots and grow into something that looks close to heaven in the right lighting so he tells her the truth or maybe something he mistakes for the truth and they both believe it. They both believe it's enough.

And for a while, it is.

Later that night, long after Mother Nature has finished her ongoing dance of wrath and Yvonne has finally succumbed to sleep and she is quietly lying beside him, her feet safely sandwiched between his legs for some much-needed warmth and her body perfectly still and peaceful, he tosses and turns against the mattress for what seems like hours – fidgety, agitated, mind full and heart empty or heart empty and mind inexplicably full, it's all the same anyway. In the dark, he risks a short glance at Yvonne's wooden nightstand where he knows she had put her engagement ring to rest earlier because she needed some time to _figure out what to make of all this, Toby,_ and in the dark, he risks a careful glance into deep within himself, tentatively unraveling the knots of anxiety that are sitting somewhere in his throat, going all the way down to his stomach. He doesn't know when he eventually manages to follow suit and fall asleep as well but when he does, his dreams are an irritating and confusing blur.

He is a child at first, not much older than five or six, and his mother's soft hand is firmly grasping his as they walk through a sunlit forest. It's eerily quiet, dead silent in fact, and he wonders for a brief moment who might have stolen the birds from the trees, why their footsteps sound so hollow on the ground, where the bugs have disappeared to, but he has to ignore the nagging questions burning inside his head because his mouth is going much faster than he can keep up with. He is talking a mile a minute, as if part of him knows that they don't have much time together, and he is telling her all about school and proudly proclaiming that he knows how to spell his own name now – _it's T-O-B-Y_ , his tiny voice echoes through the lonely, empty forest and his mother's lips don't move at all and yet he still hears her voice say, _that's right, my love, you're such a smart boy_ – and then he begins telling her all about the police academy and how his father had reacted to him suddenly changing his career plans and she looks down at him and smiles, like he is the best thing she has ever seen, like he is the most precious thing she has ever laid eyes on – that's all she does, she smiles and smiles and smiles, and her free hand strokes his long hair out of his face, behind his ear, and she says, _it's time to go_ , and he stops his storytelling, frowns and lifts his head, realizes that they have reached the end of their path.

 _Aren't you coming with me?_ he asks her, confused, and his voice sounds much older now, and he gazes at their intertwined fingers, and while his mother's hand seems to have stayed the same, his are calloused from age and work and life experience she never got to witness.

 _I'm sorry, baby, but you know I can't_ , she answers as she shakes her head, her hand slowly slipping from his grip. _I have some things I need to do._

He wants to stay right there, he wants to stay more than anything in the entire world, but his legs are already moving, taking him away from her, and he doesn't know how to make them stop, how to make them turn around and go back into the arms of the woman he didn't have the chance to properly say goodbye to. _Don't go_ , he says or sobs or whispers or yells without a single sound escaping his dry lips and he can't even see her anymore, he doesn't even remember her face anymore, when her voice speaks, loud and clear inside his head, _leave the past where it belongs. That's why it's called the past._

And then, all of the sudden, he stops short as night falls around him and he finds himself in a clearing surrounded by pretty trees and even prettier flowers and the woman who had seemingly been awaiting him is Yvonne until she steps out of the light and into the comforting shadows, and she is not.

 _I think I'm kinda lost_ , he tells her with a nervous chuckle, standing still as she steps closer.

 _I know_ , Spencer simply says and for a split second, she is Yvonne again, and then Yvonne disappears once more. His head is spinning. He squeezes his eyes shut, silently counts to three, four, then five and six, and only feels brave enough to open them again when he can feel her hot, steady breath tickling the skin of his jaw. Her brown eyes are mesmerizing. He feels utterly helpless. In trance.

 _Remember when_ we _talked about getting married one day?_ she asks him in a light tone as if they are making conversation about nothing in particular, as if she doesn't fully know that he hasn't been able to forget even though he never stopped trying, and her hand is on his chest, her black nails clawing at his heart over and over, as if she is trying to rip it out, as if she is trying to tear him apart and smash it into pieces for not fulfilling the countless promises he had given her. _What happened to that?_

 _I don't know, Spence. We fell apart. We broke up. Things change_. He shrugs, flinching when she scratches him some more, her sharp nails leaving burning marks all over his chest _. Aren't you being a little unfair right now? What are you punishing me for? You've moved on. Why can't I do the same?_

Tilting her head and glancing up at him from under her lashes, she shoots him a smile that sends his stomach into a somersault. _Who's stopping you, Toby?_

Her smirk briefly changes into one of Yvonne's overjoyed grins and he has to blink again, blink some more when her lips press a soft kiss against his jaw, his cheek, his neck. _I got lost. I'm trying to find Yvonne._

 _Really? I don't think so. I think you were trying to find me_ , she says, pulling back a little with her eyebrows raised comically. _You brought me here. I was fine without you_. _I_ am _fine without you._

 _I just really need you to go_ , he responds, pleading, and it's completely useless because his arms are now curling around her waist, holding her like he is afraid she might listen, and her arms are curling around his neck so tightly, he feels like she is delicately suffocating him in her wondrous embrace and he doesn't even know who is really hugging because one moment, he is gasping for breath, for Yvonne, and the next second, he is burying his nose in Spencer's shoulder, in her curly hair. _I just want you to leave. I love her. I love her so much_.

He feels rather than hears the vibrations of her breathy, long-drawn-out moan and suddenly, they are in his trailer, two hearts beating in one single body, gracefully spread across his bed, her long legs around his middle as he rams into her without mercy and her hand is ghosting over his cheeks, her lips pink and swollen as she whimpers, twitches, buckles her hips wildly under his ministrations.

 _I love you_ , she whispers, touching her forehead to his. _I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you_.

His heart is soaring and he is high on her; high on her voice, her sweet smell, the glorious feeling of her contracting around him with each thrust. Hungry for her kiss, starving for her affection, he leans down to catch her half-open mouth but just before their lips can connect, she turns her head to the side, distracted by something to their left. Next to them, Yvonne is propped up on one elbow, the engagement ring on her finger accusingly sparkling in the light, her eyebrows curved at the pair. A strong wave of rotten shame is what hits Toby in the face first, in his stomach, in his guts, then overwhelming disgust; he wants to climb off Spencer, stagger away from the bed but his traitorous body is too far gone to stop now and he just keeps thrusting, undisturbed, and the brunette underneath him merely continues as well, professing her undying love for him over and over, whispering about all the secrets they would share under the covers when the world was different and new.

 _You know, I'm glad you're having so much fun over there_ , Yvonne begins matter-of-factly, like she isn't the slightest bothered by what's right in front of her, _but I was trying to sleep and this is annoying._

 _Sorry,_ Spencer manages to croak out, throwing her head back in pleasure as a quiet, girlish giggle follows Toby's tongue and teeth vigorously attacking her neck. _Next time, we'll be more quiet_.

A seemingly never-ending moment or two passes before Toby finally jerks aware, soaked in cold sweat of guilt, and immediately makes a run for the bathroom where he spits what is left of the sumptuous meal from last night's dinner into toilet. His alarm goes off a bit later and then falls silent, probably because Yvonne has turned it off in a dizzy state of half-slumber as she usually does, and he is still rinsing out his mouth for the sixth time, still not quite succeeding in getting rid of the taste of his dream clinging to his tongue, when he hears her call out for him. He stares at his reflection in the small mirror over the sink, unsure whether he is ready to face her yet, whether he is ready to look into her soft eyes after what transpired in his disastrous dream – after what had transpired between them last night. But there isn't anywhere left to run. He sighs, nervously combing his fingers through his hair, and blindly grabs a towel to wipe his face one last time before finally exiting the tiny bathroom.

"Hey," Yvonne greets him with the laziest but happiest of smiles that he can't fully appreciate because she is also propped up on one elbow like she had been in his nightmare merely half an hour ago. He inhales deeply, trying to shake the images out of his head, and returns her smile as authentically as possible, hoping that it doesn't look like a grimace. "Are you okay?"

He frowns in mock-confusion. "Yeah…why wouldn't I be?"

She shrugs. "You kept tossing and turning all night. I don't even know if you actually slept."

Walking over to the coffee machine on the countertop and turning it on in order to conceal the fearful expression he knows is currently blooming on his face, he shakes his head a little and quickly decides to reply with a half-lie, half-truth. "No, it's…I had a dream about my mom, that's all."

He hears the mattress shift under her weight as she moves to stand up. A few beats later, she closes the distance between them, her slender arms encircling his waist protectively, her lips pressing against the bare skin of his back in a kiss that is so tender, so light that he nearly doesn't feel it. When his eyes fall on their now intertwined fingers on his stomach, he is surprised to find the engagement ring on her hand and he is even more surprised when he finds that it actually manages to slowly, steadily, surely wash away the nasty nightmare still ghosting about his veins.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, her voice incredibly tiny and incredibly sincere too.

"No, I'm sorry," he responds, unintentionally slipping into the same quiet whisper, his thumb drawing patterns on the back of her hand. "I'm really sorry for what happened last night. I'm sorry for making you feel that way. I never meant to make you cry or-"

She stops him with another kiss to his shoulder blade, shaking her head into his back. " _Shh_. That was last night. It's a new day now. Don't do that," she says and yeah, his heart isn't flying or soaring or singing countless upbeat songs about love and the tragedy of it but it feels secure, calm; it feels like it has finally found its way back, found its way _home_ after getting lost on a long and wary journey. "I shoulda…I don't know…been more understanding. It's like, like something inside me shut down and then I started freaking out and I got really scared that…and I couldn't stop thinking about it, you know? I know you're not _him_ and I know I shouldn't even be comparing you two because it's unfair and because you'd never do that to me but…like I said, I don't know. These last weeks were really…"

"Confusing," he offers when she trails off, not finishing her sentence. He feels her nod slightly, her grip on his middle tightening, and strokes whatever he can reach of her arm. "I know. I feel the same."

"I want to be with you. More than anything. But I'm still scared."

Turning in her embrace slowly and then cupping her cheek, her tilts her head towards him to catch her innocent gaze in his and asks, quietly, because he is just as afraid of the answer, "Scared of what?"

Yvonne pulls up one shoulder in a weak half-shrug and remains silent for a beat and then another as if she is struggling to put it into the right words. "That our lives are gonna be like this forever?" she eventually speaks up, a hesitant question mark tainting her voice. "That we'll never become the people we're supposed to be?"

It goes like this: a week passes by, then two, then two and a half, and with her fears and doubts still burning holes into his stomach, he makes a decision that is utterly impulsive at best and completely stupid if he chooses to pause and examine it rationally but he of course refuses to do just that. He wants to leave, he tells her one evening as she is perched in front of her laptop and answering emails from work. He wants to leave _together_ ; run away or move away or whatever the right term is now and when she opens her mouth to protest, her head turning in the direction of the house that is almost looking like a real house now, he tells her that he can build her a thousand homes, if she wants him to, in a thousand different places. It doesn't have to be Rosewood. She hums, tilts her head, lets it sit for a second. Then she says that it's kind of sudden but that she will think about it and think about it she does. It takes her a while, takes her so long that he has nearly given up, so long that he is already trying to get used to the thought of Rosewood once more. But then, a few weeks that feel like half an eternity and a day later, she comes up to him at work and she simply says yes, like she had when he fell on his knee before her, like she had when he asked her to be his. _Yes_ , she says and adds that it would be a good fresh start for both of them, considering that they are going to be a family now. _Yes_ , she is more than excited to start this new chapter with him and thrilled to bits at the thought of watching him grow, watching herself grow and hopefully, one lucky day, watching their kids grow too. _Yes_ , she nods, this town had an expiration date, anyway, didn't it? It was never meant to be their permanent home. Not really. _Yes_ , leaving might be a good idea, the best idea they have ever had. And her eyes, her gorgeous fucking eyes, are whispering what are lips are not: _It might be a good idea to leave all those memories. Leave all our ghosts that won't stop haunting us. Leave everything that we aren't anymore but used to be two heartbreaks and one too many tears ago._

They find an affordable, two-bedroom home on an island in Knox County, Maine, the impressive windows in the master bedroom offering a breath-taking view of the local harbor. Yvonne's maternal aunt lives about forty minutes away and her favorite cousin and his little family, as it turns out, are residing in the very same neighborhood, just a short walk down the street, and even though he is still hesitating, making eyes at a different condo in Camden, he knows his fiancée has already made up her mind and there is no way he is going to convince her of giving up the small cottage she has, head over heels, fallen in love with and is determined to make hers. That's what she is like, what he had always admired greatly about her: when she puts her mind on something, she doesn't stop until she finally reaches her desired goal. And, really, he doesn't think he has the right to question her. So what if the new town they will be living in is even smaller than Rosewood and small towns always make for _a lot_ of nasty gossip and judgment. So what if he doesn't particularly feel like living by the harbor and waking up to the smell of salt water and the sounds of fishermen hauling their latest catch onto their boats every morning. So what if he still hasn't heard back from the seemingly close-knit, local police department or the sheriff's office that is serving the entire county. She said yes to him. To his proposal, his ring, his pleas, his heart. To his suggestions to move and leave Rosewood behind and while that includes leaving Spencer and Johnathan, and Johnathan and Spencer, it includes her parents and his mother's lonely grave too. She said yes to him even though he had hurt her, made her doubt herself and his feelings. She said yes to him even though he hadn't deserved it. The least he can do now is follow her lead faithfully, isn't it? The least he can do is learn to compromise.

It goes like this: Emily is the one that gets the unexpected news straight from his mouth. She comes over a couple of days after everything has been set in motion and the realtor they had hired is trying to find someone that will gladly take the now finished house – a lovely shade of undying love, shiny happy endings and baby blue, like a modern fairytale come to life – off their hands. The request he suspects she had initially come to him for immediately dies in her throat the second he tells her. In her gaze, he can identify a strange mixture of longing (as though she too desperately wishes she could simply pack her things, cut herself out of the web of lies and danger that is engulfing her, and set the whole town on fire) and despair (as though his intentions are inherently malicious, as though he is forcefully taking away the safety net that she was sure would keep herself and the girls out of trouble and, more importantly, prison should it come to it). But as quickly as her eyes had clouded over, they just as quickly light up with a fake smile as she congratulates him on the engagement and the new house and then half-jokingly announces that she will be more than mad at him if he doesn't personally come knocking at her door to hand her the wedding invitation when the day has come. Her cheerful enthusiasm and demeanor don't convince him in the slightest. He feels as if he is abandoning her like a puppy on the side of the road, just leaving her like it's no big deal, right when she seemingly needs him and his help the most but she merely shakes her head when he frowns and asks her what's wrong, what he can do to help, and says, pulling him into a hug, "Live. That's what you should be doing."

He hands in his badge, ID card and weapon the following evening and bumps into Hanna and Caleb upon exiting the police station. They are sitting on the sidewalk across the street, apparently deep in conversation at first, and immediately let go of each other's hand when Hanna briefly lifts her head and spots Toby walking to his truck. He feels something that he can only describe as secondhand fury at the younger man or maybe jealousy and bitter disappointment so he opts for pretending that he didn't even see them in the dark and is about to get into his car when Caleb's happy wave stops him in his tracks. He sighs, realizing that he has no choice but to walk over to them now, and fakes the same grin Emily had given him the morning prior. They talk about this and that, the awkwardness of their encounter lying thick in the air around them, and while that is seemingly lost on Caleb, Toby is sure that Hanna can tell. She pulls her knees away just slightly on Toby's look, as though she is quickly trying to create some physical space between herself and Caleb, as though she is silently trying to deny what Toby saw is exactly what he thought it was. There are numerous, numerous things Toby wants to say to both of them (and mostly Caleb) but he thinks that it's none of this business, not anymore. That it never really was. He decides to swallow a large part of his anger.

"Well, I better get going," Toby eventually says, pointing at his truck over his shoulder.

"You should," Caleb agrees in a casual tone while Hanna remains silent, and he is shooting Toby a genuine and toothy grin, like they are normal friends teasing each other, like he doesn't have anything to feel even mildly bad about. "Don't leave your girlfriend waiting for too long. I bet she is worried."

Swallowing part of his anger apparently hadn't stopped what's left from ruthlessly contaminating his thoughts, feelings, words, because Toby retorts right away, in the same casual tone, only he is far from it. "Yeah, you shouldn't leave yours waiting either. She's probably wondering where you are."

He doesn't stick around for their response. He doesn't have to. Hanna's face says more than enough.

Truth be told, he had never considered him and Aria to be especially close. Sure, she had always been Spencer's friend and when it came to Spencer, as he had found out pretty quickly after the fateful day he kissed her for the very first time, you were never just dating her and her alone. You inevitably had to date all of her friends and her family too. He didn't mind. He liked her friends. Over the years, he and Aria had talked some and they had laughed some, and shared many, _many_ baffled looks every time Spencer and Hanna got into yet another quarrel over something ridiculously unimportant but he never thought that they were friends. That's why it takes him by complete surprise when she shows up at his trailer, carrying a wrapped present in one hand and a colorful bouquet in the other. She explains that it's a belated engagement gift from her and Emily, and _I hope Yvonne likes it_. She doesn't stay long; ten minutes, maybe fifteen, where they talk about Ezra Fitz of all people and then wedding dresses and the weather in Maine. The real reason for her visit, the reason she had been careful to hide, dawns on him much later when she hugs him goodbye and asks, almost as an afterthought, in passing, and he wonders how the hell Aria kept her relationship with her teacher a secret for so long because she is a _horrible_ liar, "Sorry, I'm just, I'm just curious – when did you say you guys are leaving tomorrow?"

He doesn't realize that he is stuck in an awful state of waiting and waiting and waiting after Aria's visit until morning comes around and with that, their last day in Rosewood too. As the moving company is loading all of their belonging into their van and Yvonne's loud, echoing voice is instructing them to _please_ be careful with the brown cardboard box that is overflowing with their silverware, Toby tries to busy himself with rearranging the moving boxes in the bed of his truck. His gaze falls on what he knows is the scrabble board, sitting quietly between his mother's memories and the wooden jewelry box that is keeping the photos of Yvonne's late grandmother safe. He braces himself for overwhelming pain that doesn't come. Instead, all he feels is numb and his stomach churning with restlessness and anxiety of the worst kind. And then—and then burn scars on the back of his head, a pair of aching eyes glued to his every movement. He knows that she is there and it's relief that floods him next, replaces the hollowness inside him. Relief because he _had_ been waiting even though he shouldn't have and relief because he _had_ wanted to see her, just one more time, just to stare at her face and etch it deeply into the corner of his mind so that he wouldn't forget. And then—fear. He doesn't know what he is supposed to do if she decides to step out of her hiding place. He doesn't have the courage to look into her eyes and say goodbye to her. He never had.

It goes like this: she stays hidden until they are driving off and he catches a brief glimpse of her figure in the rear-view mirror, standing tall, head high, hands in the pockets of her coat, an amazon.

It goes like this: his eyes keep flickering to her reflection for a while longer as she keeps getting smaller and smaller and he thinks of Maine, Maine, Maine, because it's less panic-inducing than thinking about everything he feels like he should have said to her if only he hadn't been such a massive coward; everything he is now scared he will tell another bizarre dream version of her instead.

It goes like this: Yvonne emits a giggle and she is excited, _happy_ , and he softly looks down at her as she leans her cheek against his arm and she says that she can't wait to see their new home and he finds that he shares her excitement because he does. And so, he forgets. He shoves away all those unwanted, pestering thoughts and feelings, locks them in a windowless room inside his mind and proceeds to ignore it. For a while, he forgets. For a while, he is the happiest he has ever been.

It goes like this: they leave Rosewood. And they don't come back.

* * *

On the day of Toby and Yvonne's wedding, Spencer has one too many cocktails and makes one too many bad decisions, gets into her car and proceeds to crash it into a light pole.

Approximately an hour later, Aria is narrowing her eyes down at her as she inspects the damage. They are back on speaking terms and it doesn't feel the same and in a drunken haze that is pounding against her temples, Spencer briefly gazes up at her friend and wonders if it ever will.

"Explain to me," Aria begins and Spencer is glad that it's not Emily who is with her right now because Emily would have already cut her into a thousand pieces, chewed her out, carelessly spit her remains on the warm asphalt and then walked all over them for good measure. She is glad that it's not Hanna either although she has no idea what Hanna would have done; she doesn't really know Hanna anymore.

"Explain to me," Aria says as she climbs into the driver's seat and closes the door behind her, "why the hell you thought that getting into your car _drunk_ was a good idea."

Spencer can't find an answer to that question so her reply consists of a weak shrug. As a response to that, her brunette friend merely purses her lips even more.

"You could have seriously hurt someone," she continues, shaking her head in disappointment and boring her hazels into Spencer's browns as if she is a frustrated mother lecturing her pubescent daughter. "You could have seriously hurt _yourself_."

"I know."

There must have been something in her voice when those two words glide from her lips or something revealing in her eyes, maybe, because Aria keeps staring, frowns and asks – and no, it's not at all gentle or warm and somehow, Spencer regrets having called her for help because Aria is Aria but on some occasions, she is also _this_ , insensitive and judgmental – "Did you _want_ to hurt yourself?"

And here's the funny thing: she has no fucking idea.

She isn't tipsy, she is _drunk_ , she knows as much, and she knows it was terribly stupid of her to take the car back home instead of sticking around and waiting for a cab after three, four, five Black Russians and two-something tequila shots. She _knows_ it was the most irresponsible thing she has done in months. Maybe years if she decides to take the fling with OkCupid Ben out of the equation. Point is, she _knows_ it was stupid and reckless and extraordinarily dangerous but she has no idea what was going through her head. She doesn't remember. Maybe it was an accident, she contemplates, staring at the light post and rubbing little circles into her forehead. And maybe, just maybe, it was not. Maybe it _had_ seemed like a good and temporary fix to her seemingly permanent problems; to everything wrong in her life. And maybe she _had_ listened to that joyful-sounding murmur sitting behind her ears, edging her on. Maybe she _had_ listened and heard and agreed with its suggestions because maybe she _hadn't_ anticipated, truly understood what it means, what it _could_ mean and where it would lead her.

She doesn't know.

And really, if she is completely honest with herself, and being honest with herself seems to come easier now that she has decided to stop being in denial, now that she is drunk out of her mind and Aria is glaring at her and she feels seventeen again; vulnerable, scared to death and lost in every single way. If she is completely honest with herself, she realizes that she doesn't want to know. Not really.

"Of course not," she eventually says to her friend, rolling her eyes. Aria exhales a sigh that is half-relief, half-something she can't quite put a finger on. "I just lost control over the steering wheel."

Aria adjusts the driver's seat. "Makes sense. Maybe it's because you decided to _drink_ and _drive_."

"I don't know if you were aware but you're allowed to let this go now," Spencer responds. Half a second later, her eyes drop in the direction of her feet and she notices, annoyed, that she has not only lost her damn mind and dignity in one night but apparently, the high heels she had bought merely a couple of days prior as well. She blows a strand of frizzy hair out of her face, too drunk to dwell on it for too long, and adds, "Look, I'm not hurt. The car is…not exactly fine but it's not totally wrecked either. I made a mistake and I'm sorry. Is that what I'm supposed to say?"

Aria proceeds to wipe some imaginary dust off the steering wheel and Spencer proceeds to avoid looking at her _stupid_ wedding band. "You don't have to say anything. I was just asking. And worried."

"Your worrying feels an awful lot like you're _judging_ me right now and I really wish you'd stop."

Suddenly, a wave of acidic dread expands in Spencer's stomach because looking at the expression on the tiny brunette's face, she can already taste where this is heading, what is coming next before Aria finds the courage to put it into words.

"You know what?" She quickly pockets Spencer's black smart keys before her friend can reach for them as though the other woman hadn't been anticipating it. "I think we need to talk."

Spencer laughs in mock disbelief. "Seriously? Right now? Right _here_?"

A nod. It's slow and almost hesitant but the conviction in her big eyes is not. She is not going to let this go, let Spencer off the hook so easily. Maybe she really should have called Hanna, Spencer thinks and squeezes the bridge of her nose in annoyance. Painful radio silence would still be more bearable than going through months, _an entire year,_ of unspoken animosities and hostility and trauma that had crept between them and strangled what was left of their friendship without blinking an eyelid.

"Can't we get our kumbayas out in my living room instead?" Spencer asks the ceiling or maybe the light post, the console, her exposed feet; anything but Aria. She is refusing to make eye contact because she knows that the waterworks will start the second she dares look at her friend and she isn't ready to give Aria the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Making her cry. Same thing. "I need to drink some water."

Wordlessly, Aria reaches into her faux leather bag and pulls out a bottle of water, handing it to the other brunette. How convenient.

"Yes. Right now. Because I don't know when else we're supposed to talk this out since you've stopped responding to my texts and picking up my calls or, god, even making some time for me when I'm in Chicago unless it's for something like…this."

Spencer scoffs. "I truly am sorry that I hurt you so much that you felt the need to sit me down in my car in the middle of fucking nowhere and bitch at me. But it's not exactly my fault that I have to work my ass off to be able to afford my apartment. I thought you of all people would understand."

She struggles with the glove compartment for a few embarrassing seconds until she finally manages to wrench it open, grabs her _Lucky Strikes_ and lights one greedily, ignoring Aria's look of complete disgust. Then the car windows start sliding open one by one and Spencer rolls her eyes at her reaction.

This is new and unfamiliar but unexpected? Not even in the slightest. She knows how _she_ is, how she can get when the situation calls for it – or doesn't call for it and she does it anyway; she knows the darkest corners, edges and thorns of Aria's brain but they had never been the ones to fight like this. Not with each other, anyway. Now, her and Em, that had always been something. Emily's tongue is sharper than knives when she wants it to be – when she wants to hit and scratch and cut Spencer where it hurts the most – and she remembers Aria's eyes turning an ugly shade of red and disaster when Hanna once again crossed a line the brunette had deemed uncrossable and forbidden. But her and Aria, they didn't fight like this, never fought like this…and yet she isn't surprised. Long time coming, right? Way too much bottled-up bullshit that couldn't be accurately expressed and discussed through a few lousy emojis under Instagram or Facebook posts.

"I didn't know your job required to delete all of your friends off social media," Aria remarks bitingly and her eyes are twinkling and Spencer can nearly feel Hanna's unspoken presence prickling in the back of her neck and suddenly, Emily is there too, judging and watching and judging, and they are all disappointed in her or maybe they are rightfully laughing at what's left of poor little Spencer.

The digital numbers on the car radio screen announce that it's nearing four a.m. and she idly wonders whether _Mr._ and _Mrs. Cavanaugh_ are still busy celebrating their wedding night or if they are out cold already, trying to catch some rest before they have to hurry to the airport. And when her heart gives a small jump, aches, she exhales a sigh with a self-pitying smirk and thinks about them more, about Yvonne's white dress and the happy wrinkles in the corner of Toby's eyes while he grins at her and of course it hurts, but part of her wants it to hurt even more. Because she doesn't do moderates.

"I thought we talked about that and we were over it."

Aria shakes her head no. "We never talked about it. I just pressured you into letting me back in. We never had a real conversation. You never told me why or what I did wrong or what I…"

Spencer's snort interrupts her.

"You want a conversation? Here's your conversation," she spits. "Do you know how frustrating it is to see you guys talk regularly and have cute coffee dates and brunch together while I'm…I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not stupid. I knew it would eventually get to this. I knew that you and Em would eventually feel like you have to choose between Hanna and I, but I guess I was just naïve enough to assume that we could be adults about it and that you wouldn't cut me off completely."

"It's not like that," Aria replies softly, shaking her head again. "And I didn't cut you off."

"It _is_ like that. And now you're here and acting like you were trying to reach me daily before I took you off my stupid friends list. Putting a three-word comment under a picture of my Starbucks order every other week isn't exactly reaching out. But, hey, that's just me, right? I'm totally overreacting."

Aria seemingly doesn't have anything to say and once more, Spencer isn't surprised. Biting her thumbnail, she adds, after a beat or so, "I never did anything wrong."

"I know."

"I asked her before we…before we did anything. I asked her. She said she didn't care."

"I know."

Blowing – coughing – out the smoke of her cigarette, Spencer asks, "So, enlighten me, Aria, what the hell is this? Why am I being treated like an outcast? Why am I getting the sole blame for everything that went wrong?"

Their eyes finally meet – a tiny glimmer of guilt and sadness awakening in Aria's, a whole lot of fury most likely dancing in hers – and just as predicted, the tears enter the stage as well but she doesn't care anymore. She has to get it all out. Her anger at the world, at herself, at the girls. At her life.

(At Toby.)

"Why did you guys get your happily ever after and live the lives you always wanted while I'm here like a…like a…I don't know." She gives a noise that is half-growl and points at the light post. "I mean, look at—look at _this_. Look at _me_. Why is this happening to _me_ and not to you?"

She has gone from holding back her salty tears to silently crying; from silently crying to pathetically sobbing her little heart out and the part of her that recognizes how awful her choice of words was is too busy taunting her with images of Toby's wedding to force her to an apology. She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, once, then twice, grateful for the existence of waterproof makeup although she has the sinking feeling that she is still looking utterly miserable on her own.

Aria is resting her head against the back of her seat now, gazing out of the window, her defensive posture implicating that she is close to tears as well and Spencer thinks that she must be the stupidest person in the world because while the brunette is sitting there, blissfully and intentionally blind and deaf to her friend's agony, all that is consuming her now is the urge to reach out and console her.

Screw them all.

Next time, she'll just walk home.

"I still take Ativan for my panic attacks," Aria speaks up, her voice low and quivering. "I was on Klonopin for a while. Until recently, actually. It made the insomnia worse. The nightmares too. When I could fall asleep, I mean. Nothing really seems to be helping with the flashbacks though. Not even therapy. And I did a lot of it – art therapy, music therapy, CBT, the coherence approach. But…nothing."

Maybe that was supposed to make her feel better, less alone, but it doesn't. Because all it does is reaffirm what she had been suspecting all along. Hanna had played a part in this, she is sure, perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally, but somehow, she had influenced it. But she avoids them because their happiness, no matter how fleeting at times, eats her up from the inside, makes her crave things she'll never have. And they avoid _her_ because she inevitably forces them to come face to face with memories they are trying their best to forget and leave behind. Because, really, what is she without Rosewood? _Who_ is she without Rosewood?

What's that saying again, she thinks. _You can take the girl out of Rosewood but if you take Rosewood out of the girl, all you'll be left with is an empty shell that is sucking the life out of everyone around her._

She doesn't have trauma. Not like the girls. She _is_ the sum of all of her trauma combined.

Nothing more.

"Well, have you ever driven your car against a light post on the day of your ex-boyfriend's wedding?"

Aria turns her head in her direction and Spencer can almost hear the click inside her head when a surge of sudden understanding clouds over her face.

"Yeah, didn't think so," Spencer says with a slight laugh as Aria remains silent, contemplative. She giggles as though she just told the funniest joke she has ever heard, and she thinks that she must be a fucking hilarious sight right now, her laughter and her tears, her missing shoes and all that smudged lipstick. She adds, still crackling with amusement, "That means I win, right? I win the trauma roulette."

Aria reaches for her shoulder, runs her fingers through her messy, curly hair over and over. "I don't think any of us really won here, Spencer," she whispers but all Spencer sees is her wedding ring and the unmistakable sonogram picture on her lockscreen when Aria's phone lights up with a new text.

"I'm really sorry," Aria continues and Spencer laughs and laughs and laughs.

The first time Spencer awakes from her numb and dreamless slumber the following morning, it's only what feels like a good ten or fifteen minutes later. She has a mess of her own dark, wavy hair all over her face, she then discovers, somewhat confused, and in her mouth as well, gently tickling around her nose and chin. The dull ache in her temples turns into a pulsing, painful throb when she finally feels brave enough to slowly, cautiously open her eyelids, immediately greeted by the silent and highly comforting pitch-black darkness protectively covering the entire room. The clock radio on her bedside table reads 11:54 a.m., however, so she figures that Aria must have closed the blinds and drawn the curtains shut when they came home last night although she doesn't really recall for sure.

The next time she wakes up, groggily prying her tired eyes open and watching the dark bedroom spin in excited and tiny circles, her head feeling much heavier and bigger than before ( _things just went from worse to worser_ , Hanna's voice speaks inside her ears and Spencer pulls a grimace), it really is about fifteen minutes later. An irritated, exhausted huff slips from her chapped lips and then turns into a relieved, grateful sigh when she finally manages to locate her phone on the nightstand and finds exactly zero unanswered emails from work. At least they have stopped bothering her on her days off and the weekends now, she thinks, half-pleased and yet half-aware that this is _maybe_ not a good sign but also not having enough energy to bring herself to give a shit. She knows she has to get up eventually and face the world again – which: scary – and face Aria too – which: even scarier – who is, judging by the sounds penetrating her little bubble from outside the closed door, busy doing god knows what in Spencer's kitchen that she hasn't cleaned in…far too long and that she suspects is embarrassingly dirty. Definitely not the kind of kitchen a semi-successful author who made it into the goddamn _New York Times_ , a happy, loving wife and a soon-to-be mother like Aria is used to.

"God, stop being so bitter all the time," she whispers into the room, fighting with her long strip lashes for a beat or so, unable to _gently_ remove them as the instructions had said, until her impatient fingers grow frustrated and she simply opts for ripping them off as fast as she can, taking more than couple of her own eyelashes with them in the process. " _Ow_. You sound like a fucking bitch. It's annoying."

Naturally, the room remains silent and her head remains spinning. There is no one there to answer or guide her through her very brief moment of _actual_ self-awareness and introspection so she concludes that there is no one there to judge her should she happily continue to stay just as bitter and bitchy as before either. She decides that the trashcan is too far away to bother and puts what is left of the fake eyelashes on the mattress next to her. She will have to change the bedsheets later, a task she isn't looking forward to. She hadn't taken off her makeup last night and even though it's too dark to check and tell for sure, she is pretty certain that there are numerous, ugly stains on her cream-colored pillow case. Not that it matters much. Her pillows constantly smell like cigarette smoke, anyway, and expensive perfume she really needs to stop buying because she can't afford it, and now, last night's fiasco has so _kindly_ gifted with an odor of cheap booze as well. Pursing her lips, she wonders if there are still _some_ parts of her life that haven't turned into a complete, irreparable mess yet and when she fails to come up with a good enough example, she rolls her eyes at the ceiling, at herself, and then at Aria singing cheerfully just outside the door, not a single care in the world. Lucky her.

It's her need for a cigarette or two or seven and food, preferably something really unhealthy and super greasy, that finally urges her to leave her hiding place around 1 p.m. or so. She had been right after all, by the way; when she exists her bedroom in the next best and half-clean clothes she found in the pile of laundry that is more or less living on her chair, and closes the door behind her, Aria is still busy wiping the kitchen counters with a wet rag Spencer doesn't remember owning. Which is, come to think about it, most likely the reason why her friend is cleaning in the first place. She has apparently emptied the overflowing ashtray on the windowsill by the fire escape too, cleared the takeout boxes off the coffee table, put the empty wine bottles scattered all over Spencer's apartment into a cardboard box, tried saving Spencer's dead plants by actually watering them, vacuumed her carpet and either killed or thrown out the big fat spider in her dining area that Spencer had begrudgingly made peace with a couple of days ago. Knowing Aria, though, it was probably the latter.

"Morning," Aria greets her joyfully and pauses her task as Spencer goes to inspect the brown paper bag on the counter. "I got youuuu…a quinoa salad with black beans, tofu and a really tasty basil-lemon dressing. A blueberry, oat and hazelnut smoothie. Oh, and the cookie is for afterwards."

Humming in acknowledgement, Spencer fishes the little package out of the paper bag, opens it and bites into the chocolate chip cookie without much preamble. Aria gives her a very pointed look.

"Or you can eat the cookie first, I guess. I don't care," she mumbles and wrings out the blue rag in the sink before she takes off her gloves. "How are you feeling?"

"Great," Spencer replies, mouth full, and holds her free hand up to her neck. "Just, you know, kinda thinking about decapitating myself to get rid of the headache. Other than that, never been better."

Aria shoots her a tiny half-smile. "Yeah…but you should probably do that in the bathtub. Blood stains are kinda hard to get out of carpet," she deadpans, crossing her arms and leaning against the counter to watch her friend finish her cookie. "I mean it though. How are you? You know, emotionally?"

The other woman heaves an internal sigh – _what a great fucking question_ – wiping her hands on the nearest dishwashing towel. "I'm fine," she responds anyway, not having the slightest idea whether that is the whole truth or not. She shrugs a little. "Thanks for everything you did around here and last night and I'm sorry for being such a major bitch but, really, I'm fine. Never been better, like I said."

"Don't be. I feel like I deserved that." Hazel eyes stare at the back of her head as Spencer crosses the room wordlessly to where her ashtray and cigarettes are waiting. "You should talk to Hanna though."

"Mmhm," Spencer makes, accompanied by a small, humorless laugh. She opens the window slowly and adds, over her shoulder, before she skillfully climbs out and onto the fire escape, "and say what? _Hey, remember when I asked you if you were okay with me dating your ex and you said yeah, sure, go for it? And then he cheated on me with you and you had the nerve to act like I should've seen it coming and like I don't have the right to be upset about it? Anyway, long time no see, are we best friends again?_ Not exactly a great conversation starter in my opinion but maybe that's just me."

But just as she had expected, her poor attempts to escape their tedious conversation are foiled half a beat or so later when her friend decides to appear by the window too and rests her slender arms on the dirty windowsill, looking both unamused and thoughtful. "I wouldn't phrase it like that either but it's worth a try. If it's bothering you so much, reaching out and talking to her is definitely worth a try."

"Well, that's where you're wrong. It's not bothering me and I don't wanna reach out to her. Or talk to her. Or even see her." Spencer blows the smoke from her cigarette away from Aria's face who rolls her eyes at her friend and maybe rightfully so. "You should go back inside. Eat that salad or whatever."

"And let you run away from this conversation we should've had ages ago? Yeah, sure, let me do that."

"Uh, nobody's running away. I'm literally just smoking," Spencer tells her in a patient tone, briefly lifting the hand that is currently holding her cigarette as if to remind the other woman. "Secondhand smoke isn't good for the baby. Wouldn't wanna endanger my niece or nephew."

That came out especially wrong and obnoxious and _a lot_ more sarcastic than she had both wanted and intended to and she knows it full well but it's too late to rewind and go back on it now. She blames it on her physical and emotional hangover instead. Aria's hazels momentarily widen in an interesting mixture of shock and surprise, like Spencer discovered a secret she was never supposed to be let in on, so she feigns a big smile and explains, "I saw the sonogram on your phone. Congratulations."

The shorter brunette returns her smile at once although it seems much prettier, happier and way more genuine on her features that are, now that Spencer is looking at her – _really_ looking at her – indeed a little rounder and softer than a couple of months ago. "Thank you. I swear I wanted to tell you but it's still kinda early and everyone always says that you should wait until the second trimester. And, well…"

"And see above, re: me being a major bitch last night," Spencer suggests when she trails off. "I know."

"It's not that," Aria insists firmly. "I just didn't wanna make it worse. You were already…"

"An embarrassingly drunk, pathetic mess that managed to drive her car into a light post and then called you sobbing hysterically," Spencer concludes, groaning and trying to pull her head out of reach when Aria begins fumbling with her bangs in a fruitless attempt to fix them. "Stop doing that."

Aria grabs her chin to hold her still. "You look like a panda that got into a fight with an angry raccoon."

"Raccoons and pandas don't even live together," Spencer states and scrunches up her nose at Aria's thumb on her eyebrows. "And your pep talks are the worst."

"This isn't a pep talk. I'm just-"

"I swear to god," Spencer cuts in loudly, not letting her finish her sentence because she is equal parts horrified and disgusted when Aria brings her thumb to her own mouth like she is planning on getting it wet before diving right back in. "If you touch my face with your _spit_ , I'm climbing down this fire escape to get away from you."

Apparently giving up for now, Aria drops her arms with a low thud and squints at her. "How do you even live in this apartment?"

"How do I—what? Just like anyone else? What kind of question is that?"

Aria's lips turn into a thin line. "I found a used condom under your sofa. It looked, like, _really_ old."

At her words, Spencer feels an awkward flush color her face a deep, dark shade of scarlet. Now _that's_ embarrassing. Still, she feigns nonchalance and merely retorts, "At least you know I'm responsible."

Aria emits a sigh, maneuvering herself out of the window elegantly. "No. You're stupid."

"And _you're_ pregnant," Spencer points out and watches her friend as she wipes her hands on her long skirt and plops down on the fire escape beside her. "Why aren't we talking about that instead?"

"I'm gonna be pregnant for about thirty-five more weeks. We'll have plenty of time to talk about the baby." She shrugs off her cardigan unceremoniously and puts it over Spencer's shoulders. Spencer knows, logically, that it _is_ cold; Chicago winters are especially harsh and nothing like Rosewood or D.C. but she can't feel a damn thing. Not the razor burn on her legs, not the goosebumps on her arms underneath her sweater, nothing but the ache in her temples, really, and the pressing need to somehow get out of this conversation. "We're talking about you now. You need therapy, Spence. And meds."

"Because I forgot a used condom under my sofa?"

"Because your apartment looked like a war zone when we came home last night."

"Hanna has never cleaned anything in her life." She immediately gives an internal wince at the gross taste of her name in her mouth, uttered all casual and whatnot, like they are doing just fine and the blonde never hurt her in ways Spencer wasn't aware a person could hurt someone else, and covers up her reaction quickly by putting out her cigarette in the black ashtray between her thighs. "But you're not forcing her into therapy."

"Yeah, see, thing is, Hanna is a slob. You, on the other hand, are a mess," Aria counters, raising her eyebrows playfully when Spencer merely responds with an irritated glare. "And, no, she's doing therapy, actually. So is Emily, by the way. And I already told you that I'm doing the same."

"And you also told me that it's not working," Spencer reminds her, crossing her arms in defense. "I'll admit that I got _a little_ lazy with my chores because of work but come on. It didn't look _that_ bad."

"In Spencer standards, it did."

"There's a Spencer standard now? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Aria looks at her with genuine concern. "I'm serious, Spence. You need help."

"I don't need help, okay?" Spencer shakes her head stubbornly and a small voice inside her wonders if her life is just a blurry cycle of permanent addiction now. Get rid of the pills, get addicted to being the best at everything. Get stuck in a job that holds nothing but soul-sucking emptiness and practically no room for improvement whatsoever, get addicted to cigarettes. Get tired of the brief release nicotine has to offer, get addicted to being miserable all the time and then cling to that feeling like a child to its mother. Rinse and repeat. She shakes her head some more, shakes the thought out of her brain, and adds, trying to sound earnest, "My life's a bit messy right now but I can fix it on my own."

"Fine," Aria shoots back at once like she was expecting that answer. "Let's call Hanna then."

"How many times do I have to repeat it before you actually listen to me?" Spencer half-groans. "I don't _wanna_ talk to Hanna."

Aria grins at her and it looks almost smug. She knows what she is doing and she probably thinks that Spencer hasn't caught on yet but the brunette is aware. "Em would be happy about a text from you."

"I don't have anything to say to Emily."

"Okay. Let's talk to Toby."

" _Point is_ ," Spencer speaks up loudly before her friend can proceed with her not-so-subtle little game of manipulating Spencer both into submission and acknowledging that she may need stupid therapy sessions after all. Which she doesn't. "I don't wanna talk to _any_ of these people."

"You said you wanted to fix your life."

"My life isn't gonna magically fix itself by talking to them and saying things that'll just end up hurting all of us," Spencer replies and isn't that the fucking truth anyway. "Believe me, there's _a lot_ of things I wish I could get out but it just doesn't matter anymore. They're not the only source of my issues."

"Yeah," Aria agrees with her for once and leans her head against Spencer's shoulder to which Spencer heaves a sigh and leans her head against Aria's. "Rosewood is. That's why you need therapy."

"No, that's why I need _time_. I need time to heal and move on. And I need time to figure out who I am," Spencer says, letting Aria pry her first open and poke the inside of her palm. "God, too bad nobody ever tells you that your 20s aren't gonna be as glamorous as they show you on TV."

"Tell me about it."

"What are you talking about?" Spencer eyes her warily in a half-squint. "You wrote a bestseller. You're married and having a baby. Everyone's waiting for your next book. Sounds glamorous to me."

"What's the worst thing you've done lately?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Because mine is _really_ terrible and hearing about yours is gonna make me feel better," Aria explains and ignores Spencer's eye-roll that follows. "So what's the worst thing you've done lately?"

Spencer furrows her eyebrows. "Uh, the light post? You were there."

Aria seemingly contemplates that for a second or two and then shakes her head. "Doesn't count."

"It _does_ count. I showed you mine, you show me yours. That was the deal," Spencer responds in a firm tone. "What's your deep dark secret that reminded you how awful your 20s actually are?"

Aria lifts her head to see her friend better and her expression shifts and she suddenly looks like she is chewing and choking on a really, really disgusting memory. "I had a bad mental health day a while ago—you know, Ezra and I had this fight and my editor was breathing down my neck and I couldn't exactly tell her that whenever I went to Chicago for _research_ , I literally did everything but research and…you know. I went out but that was a majorly stupid idea because I was high on Ativan…" She trails off, tilting her head a little, looking kind of pained. "Do I really have to say it?"

It's, admittedly, a lot. Aria's ramblings are oftentimes a lot, especially when she falls into fast-paced, panicky type of monologue where every single line blurs into the other and she is stumbling over her words as if her tongue can't quite keep up with her thoughts. But now, with Spencer's hangover and a million other thoughts and memories and feelings occupying her damn head, it's next to impossible for her to follow and get what her friend is currently hinting at.

"Yeah, you kinda have to but because I'm not really-" And suddenly, it clicks. " _Oh my god_."

Aria gives a meek shrug, her face ridden with guilt. "I know."

"So…uh… _this_ …?"

The other brunette's eyes widen, her petite hands flying to her stomach instantly. "No. _No_. The baby happened way after that. Way, _way_ after that. This is one-hundred-percent Ezra's."

For once, Spencer is at a loss for words. "Wow."

Aria gives her a look. "You don't get to judge me after everything I've done for you last night."

"I'm not judging you," Spencer clarifies. "I just said wow."

Aria makes a whiny sound somewhere in the back of throat and proceeds to rest her head against her friend's arm heavily, eyes dropping in the direction of her lap. "I'm a horrible person."

"Welcome to the club. It was getting lonely," Spencer remarks in a dry tone, pursing her lips and twisting them to the side thoughtfully. "Seriously, though, are you planning on telling Ezra?"

"And risk ruining our marriage for a stupid drunk one-night-stand? No thanks." Hugging Spencer's arm to her chest more for both warmth and a piece of comfort, Aria blows an exasperated raspberry and wonders, in a low murmur against the soft fabric of Spencer's sweater, "How many bad decisions are we gonna keep making in the name of dealing with Charlotte and our Rosewood experience?"

"Who knows." Spencer heaves a sigh, staring at the building across from them.

It's calm for a while, silent, like they have now moved on to the center of the storm; that kind of gentle quiet she knows is an obvious indicator of both their existential crises blissfully raging on beneath their skin and she sort of feels like she should push Aria some more, effectively talk her into telling Ezra the entire truth because she _has_ been on both sides of that especially ugly coin and being cheated on, it's not pretty. At all. But she doesn't have the energy or emotional capacity to deal with _that_ and she certainly doesn't have neither to react or think about what Aria says next.

"You should've gone to that wedding though," she speaks up a few minutes later, her fingers playing with the hem of her sweater. "Toby and Yvonne's. And you should've worn white or something."

Spencer snorts, gives her a smirk. "I actually wanted to turn up in something red and really slutty."

"Mhm." Aria tilts her chin back to look up at her. "Why didn't you?"

Spencer merely shrugs.

"You know, if you want and if it helps, I can totally hate them for you," Aria offers, her hazels holding a mischievous twinkle. "You're the ex-girlfriend. If you hate on Yvonne, it's gonna look like you're jealous. But I'm basically nobody to them. I can hate Yvonne for you. I can hate Toby too."

"I don't wanna hate them," Spencer says. It's not a lie; there are a lot of confusing emotions she is still feeling about them, about Toby, about Yvonne, their marriage, what could have been, what should have not, but hatred isn't among them. "I just…I guess I want them to be happy."

And with her cold hand reaching deep within her to grasp her heart and mend its pieces, she adds, the tiny frown between her brows fading away, "I just finally wanna be happy too."

* * *

In Maine, a brief tour through the local police station and the slightly unsettling conversation with one of the officers on duty that follows is more than enough for him to give up his uniform for good, a decision he knows his fiancée doesn't entirely approve of and neither does his father when Toby finally has the guts to clue him in some weeks later but, really, he already had to find out ages ago that his dad is rarely happy with _any_ of his countless life choices even when he does exactly as the older man says. So he simply holds back his groan of annoyance, rolls his eyes and turns deaf when the other Cavanaugh wheezes in half-anger, half-exhaustion, and starts ranting into the phone, going on and on about his son's _clear_ _lack of impulse control_ and _inability to stick to your words_ _like a man_ and _you should be glad that your poor mother isn't around, she would've hated this as much as I do_ and _life isn't a game, boy, you can't just rewind and start fresh whenever you feel like it_ and _I told you right from the beginning that becoming a cop was a stupid idea but you wouldn't listen and now you wanna act like you've grown up and came to this conclusion on your own?_

The only carpentry business nearby turns him down over and over although he knows for a fact that they are looking to hire. "Look, I don't know you," one of the men eventually tells him when Toby grows both frustrated and desperate and pointedly brings up the big, fat sign sitting in the window after his questions are once more met with rejection and ice-cold silence. "I know almost everyone in this town but I don't know you or your girlfriend. Why the fuck should I give you a job and trust you with _my_ business and _my_ money when none of us know who you are or where you come from?"

It's certainly not a pleasant feeling he was very keen to relive when they had packed their things and moved here, being judged by a bunch of small town strangers who refuse to learn his name, his face or his story. Seeing the unspoken outsider title looming over his head again after all this time is weird to say the least, especially for completely arbitrary reasons he can't quite comprehend and doesn't want to. These people aren't judging him for blinding his _poor, innocent_ step-sister, they don't hate him for being the prime suspect in a fascinating murder case that never was and they don't avoid him for associating with a group of frightened teenage girls who cried "A" one too many times. They simply dislike him because they don't know him, don't want to know him, because they don't recognize him – and Yvonne, for that matter – as one of their precious own. It's nuts. He had expected some level of gossip following them on each and every step around town, maybe a couple of prying glances at the grocery store or a few cheerful neighbors unexpectedly dropping by with chocolate cake and leftover casserole to check out their house, judge their characters based on the color of their carpet and deduce whether or not they are good people. He definitely hadn't expected _this_. The only positive outcome is the far too belated realization that he had to be fucked up in the head when he told himself that he liked small towns. He doesn't. His momentary dedication and love for Rosewood had to be driven by bittersweet nostalgia or the very few untainted memories of his mother Jenna hadn't taken from him and twisted into something else or perhaps both _and_ too much alcohol. _Because_ _small towns are fucking hell_ , he thinks gloomily as he stands by the open French windows in the master bedroom, gazing out at the harbor with his coffee in his hand and one of the fishermen looks up at the house, waving at Toby in a way that is unmistakably meant to say, _we are watching you_.

Bruce Warren, the ginger man from the carpentry business on Main Street, calls him back one rainy morning and tells him to come in for an impromptu job interview right away and Toby suspects that it has something to do with Yvonne's cousin Cameron, who is, as he had learned upon his arrival, a member of the town's budget committee and a generally well-liked and well-known person, putting in a good word for him although she heavily denies it but doesn't have an explanation for Mr. Warren's begrudging and reluctant tone either. It's a part-time job and it doesn't pay much. They could use the money – the wedding is less than a year away – and he is itching for something to do. With Yvonne working on the mainland during the week and spending what little free-time she has focused on grabbing the empty seats on both the Planning and the School Board, he has way too much time on his hands he doesn't really know what to do with. Being unemployed after years of constantly doing _something_ is hard enough as it is but being unemployed in a town that isn't particularly fond of him, and on an island on top of that, is even worse.

He helps out in Mr. Warren's business and goes back to school – " _You,_ back in school? What a waste of time and money," his dad sneers on the other end of the line and Toby can almost _hear_ him raise his thick eyebrows mockingly – and spends the ferryboat ride to the mainland hunched over various architecture books he bought for cheap off eBay, carefully organized ring binders that are filled with his notes in perfect black cursive and a bunch of manila folders carrying pages over pages of library books he had copied during his trip to Maine's capital Augusta. Yvonne takes a picture of him standing in front of the school building when the semester starts and uploads it to her Instagram account, proudly captioning it, " _My baby's first day of class_ ," and he has to react quick, fight and kill the unwanted emotions that arise deep within him in order not to look like kicked puppy dog when she leans in to kiss him goodbye.

She thinks his main reason for returning is the small police station that she too had agreed was immensely creepy beyond measure and the officer who had given him a really bad feeling somewhere in his stomach. She thinks Mr. Warren's dislike for him and the position he had finally given Toby in an attempt to please his good friend Cameron was what drove Toby to the mainland, what drove him to exploring new worlds and career options. And, painfully aware that it's starting to become an ugly pattern he can't seem to break free from, Toby lets her continue assume just that because he doesn't have the heart to tell her the entire truth. He can't tell her that he feels trapped on this island when they are lying side by side in bed and she is fast asleep and all he can think of is leaving again tomorrow morning; can't tell her that he only loved Rosewood in his memory and that the part of his identity he had carefully built from scratch after he and Spencer broke up – _small town guy, that's all I really am_ – the part of his identity she had fallen for, is slowly fading away, and he has no fucking idea who he is anymore without Rosewood there to give him meaning. He can't tell her that he changed his mind, that moving was a bad idea, because it was _his_ idea that she had gone along with without even pausing to properly think about it; he doesn't have the right to complain now, does he?

And he most definitely can't tell her that there are times – not many, not a lot, but they are scarily real and they exist when they shouldn't be on his mind at all – where he is looking at the bay during his daily ferry rides and he wonders, as briefly as it is, whether it was Rosewood after all that successfully tricked and manipulated him and Yvonne into believing that this was enough for them both. Whether there will eventually come one lucky day where he finally adapts and accepts that this is his life now and that there is nothing he can do about it, not when Yvonne is so incredibly happy with how everything has turned out and telling her his real feelings, his honest thoughts, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, would crash her and yank it out of her grasp.

Life goes on.

And so does he.

It's a Friday evening sometime in late April and Toby is balancing his laptop on top of the dryer in the laundry closet, half-distractedly trying to finish editing his Art History I essay before the deadline can catch up with him and knock him out. He is still busy staring at his laptop screen with a blank and almost desperate expression, struggling to find another concise synonym for _radiance_ that he hasn't used more than twice yet, and shaking his head at his poorly done paragraph on illusionistic realism, when the washer beeps and interrupts his working process. Exhaling a sigh, he crouches down to grab the laundry from the washer and immediately curses at the sight that greets him there.

Just then, Yvonne walks over from the kitchen. "Can you do me a fav—ew, what happened here?"

Without lifting his head, he holds up a wrinkled, linty something that is barely holding on and remarks dryly, "Seems like _someone_ forgot a Kleenex in here before they turned on the washing machine."

She takes the destroyed tissue from him and gives a hearty laugh. "Sorry. I was talking to my mom while I sorted the laundry and probably forgot to check."

"It's fine," he responds, shaking out the shirt in his hand and throwing it in the dryer. "What favor?"

There is the innocent smile he knows too well. She is softly preparing him for something she already knows he won't like too much and he knows what she is doing but that doesn't exactly prevent him from falling for it headfirst anyway. She puts a pile of white envelopes on top of the washer in front of him and asks, her voice warm like milk and honey on a cold winter's day, "Can you take these to the post office on the mainland tomorrow? I would do it but the Planning Board is holding an open meeting and I really wanted to go-"

Eyeing the envelopes carefully, he extends his arm to run his thumb along the edges and silently count them all one by one. "Yeah, I can do that, but I think we're almost at…what? 130 people now? When you initially said that you wanted to invite about sixty…or sixty-five…something like that."

"Thank you, babe. I love you," Yvonne purrs in appreciation, purposely and quite skillfully, if he may add, ignoring the second part of his answer as her fingers start combing through his hair.

"Yeah," he agrees, kind of amused against his will but kind of confused too. "I mean, don't take this the wrong the way but it looks like the wedding's gonna be more expensive than we thought."

"My dad said they'd help us out."

"Yeah and _my_ dad said he and Tammy aren't planning on showing up at all," he responds, wiping the residual lint off the damp sweatpants in his hold. "Maybe…ten of my family members are actually gonna attend the wedding. If I'm lucky. Don't you think that's gonna look a _little_ weird?"

She leans down as well to help him empty the washer faster and squints her eyes at her fiancé just barely, like she has trouble following his thoughts. "What do you mean? Weird how?"

"I don't know. I just think it's gonna look weird, seeing my tiny side of the family next to yours."

"What's all this talk about my side of the family, your side of the family? We're getting married. Your family _is_ my family. And my family is yours."

He exhales a tiny sigh between his lips. "I know. I'm just saying that we wanted a small ceremony and now it's turning into this whole event with people you said you don't even really know."

"So what do you want me to?" Yvonne shakes out the tank top in her hand roughly, nearly hitting him in the face with it. "Send out letters and uninvite all of our guests?"

"No."

"Then what am I supposed to do here?"

"I don't know," Toby says truthfully. She purses her lips in annoyance and he can't exactly blame her for that. He feels annoyed too. "Take my thoughts into consideration sometime?"

She lowers her hands into her lap at once, the linty shirt momentarily forgotten as she simply blinks at him and furrows her dark brows. "Why are you being so passive aggressive?"

"I'm not."

"You _are_ ," she corrects him matter-of-factly. "Is something else bothering you and you just waited for the right second to pick a fight with me?"

He averts his eyes, playing with the knobs on the dryer, looks away from her and the light coming in from their backyard and that terrible harbor that makes her look like an avenging angel, swiftly grabs that feeling by the hair and hides it somewhere dark and empty, somewhere neither of them can see.

"I'm not picking a fight," he states, his voice sounding foreign to his ears but luckily, she doesn't seem to notice. "All I said is that we agreed on a small ceremony months ago and now it looks like that's not what's gonna happen."

"It's a wedding," she says and closes the dryer door sharply, most likely to get both his attention and gaze back on her. "You're only supposed to do that once in a lifetime, okay, and I want it to be special."

Watching her stand up from the floor and then cross her arms defensively, he sighs another breath of exhaustion, instantly regretting having muttered anything about his worries in the first place, and rises to his feet. He picks up the green laundry basket next to him that is still carrying yesterday's finished load and merely says, "Okay," before he walks past her and into the open sitting room to their left.

She, of course, follows him. "Okay what?"

Toby empties the full basket on the beige leather sofa she had picked when they move onto the island and he doesn't particularly like too much. "Nothing. I just said okay."

"See, that's what I meant. You're doing it again."

"I'm folding laundry."

"No, you're being passive aggressive."

He turns his head a little to look at her and whatever she manages to find in his eyes, he doesn't really know and he doesn't ask, but it makes her face soften visibly. "I swear I'm not. You can invite 130 peo—god, you can invite 500 people if that's what you want. You're right. It's our wedding and it's supposed to be something special. And I want you to feel special."

"You don't have to constantly go along with everything I say, you know."

"Well, that's not what I'm doing. I mean it. It's fine."

And that's that. They proceed to fold the laundry in silence with Yvonne bumping her hips into his every now and then in order to elicit a small laugh out of him and succeeding almost every time, and Toby cooks them a delicious dinner afterwards while she goes through his Art History essay, her brows knitted together in concentration, and before bedtime, she puts on jazz music and forces him to dance with her on the open deck in their backyard until they both end up giggling so hard that they have to stop and he thinks, despite his stomach continuously aching with concern and his uncertainties gnawing at his heart and his fear getting louder and louder by the second, he thinks, it's nice, what they have here. It's all nice and shiny and bright if he shuts up when he has to, if he just learns to finally keep his thoughts and worries to himself and stifle the seeds of hesitancy before they can grow.

"I gotta tell you something," Yvonne begins later when they are both in the master bathroom, he is walking up and down while brushing his teeth and she is carefully applying her night moisturizer in front of the mirror. "I actually didn't wanna tell you at all because I wanted it to be a surprise and then we had that fight earlier and uh…well…I kind of invited Spencer. To the wedding."

He stops dead in his tracks, the toothbrush sticking out of his mouth comically. "You did what."

"Not yet!" she quickly adds, apparently having caught his horrified expression in the mirror. "It's still in the pile downstairs. I didn't have her address – I think she's in Chicago now? At least that's what I got from her Instagram. But I was gonna send it to Emily and, you know, ask her to pass it—could you stop looking at me like that? I invited your other friends as well. It's not _just_ Spencer. I sent an invitation to Caleb and his girlfriend too. The blonde one? Hanna, right?"

He is still struggling to digest what she has so casually served him on a silver platter like it's no big fucking deal at all when she continues, "I know what your dad and stepmom said but I talked to Jenna yesterday—yes, I know, don't say anything, you two have had your issues but I asked her if she would like to come and she said-"

Mind racing, he spits the remaining toothpaste in his mouth into the sink, grabs a towel to wipe his mouth and jaw, hands trembling, and repeats, slower than the first time but firmly too, " _You did what._ "

"I thought it would make you happy," she explains, tone stuck someplace between plead and whine and then there are the puppy dog eyes, too, right on cue, as she reaches for his arm to stroke over it in comfort and he bites his tongue, _hard_ , hoping that the harsh pain will manage to distract his body long enough to keep it from withdrawing from her touch. "You said it yourself, Toby. Most of your family's probably not even gonna bother attending and I, I couldn't stand the thought of you all alone on our wedding day and I just wanted at least _someone_ from your immediate family to be there for you. And—and your friends. Part of you will always love these people in ways I don't understand because I wasn't there but if I'm gonna marry you, it's important for me to try and love them too."

She rambles on and on and on, throwing explanations at him, then excuses and justifications that he has trouble catching and actually keeping in his grasp because he isn't listening anymore. _Love_. Funny word, that is. Definitely not the word he would have used to describe his feelings for Jenna and maybe he is being unfair right now, he thinks, blinking at Yvonne whose mouth is moving for sure but nothing she says reaches his ears, let alone his brain, no matter how much he tries. Maybe he is being unfair because he had never told her the extent of it, had he, only some bits here and other pieces there, and maybe she had wrongly assumed that he and Jenna had their normal share of relatively tame sibling disputes in their youth that Yvonne regularly got into with her siblings. Maybe she had wanted them to get over what she perceived as stubbornness and reconcile at their wedding, like family is supposed to do. And maybe he doesn't have the right to be mad, to be hurt, to be disappointed, to half-listen to what the monster inside him is hissing and actually run and never look back. Because he had never given her the entire story. Because she doesn't know. Because she thought she was doing him a favor.

Amid all of this, the conflicting feelings, the disgusting memory of Jenna's baby-like, sugar-sweet coo by his ear, amid the voices of Spencer and Caleb and his father wrapping him into a big, itchy comforter, there follows a tiny pause. A tiny, tiny pause of silence before the idle observation that had very briefly nagged at his stomach weeks ago and then some more weeks ago before _that_ , suddenly comes rushing back and all put punches him in the face with the brute force of the realization that follows: this, he and Yvonne, their love, it's not enough. They had hoped against all hope in foolish naivety but it's just…it's not enough. She doesn't know him. He doesn't know _himself_. It's not enough.

"I can still take the invitations out of the pile," Yvonne interrupts his inner monologue and she is right in front of him now, a piece of sunlight to banish his demons. "We haven't send them out yet. I just-"

_It's not enough._

_But it has to be._

_It's not enough._

_But it has to be. It has to. It has to. It has to._

"It's fine. You're right. We should be inviting them," he cuts in, his voice strangely robotic. He smiles at her in the way he knows she subconsciously wants him to, in the way that will maybe help calm her down and smooth the crease between her brows. He smiles at her like the man he was a year ago would have smiled at her. "Really, it's fine. I'll take them to the post office tomorrow morning."

Life goes on.

And he does not.

All that she is, her hauntingly beautiful eyes, her tiny ghost, her sweet memory he hadn't allowed himself to think about, to dream about, eventually returns to him in slow waves, disappearing in the tug of tides each night and leaving him aching, longing, lying, hiding, and then wondering, wondering, wondering over and over again – _what if, what if, what if_ – throughout the entire day, week, and month.

In early May, Spencer rises from the foam of his mind for the very first time, like the ocean giving birth to Aphrodite, and they lay in the sand, outstretched and already starting to fade like dying mermaids stranded on the coastline, as he picks seashells out of her wavy hair and her lips are rimmed with salt and they mistake the prints their bodies have left for the entire world. She asks him if he would like to kiss her again, taste from her mouth and get intoxicated on what they used to be before the tide comes back and forces her to leave, and he wakes up dizzy, confused, and half-mumbles his agreement when Yvonne hugs his arm and asks if he feels like making them pancakes for breakfast.

In late June, Yvonne visits him at work and brings him a stack of bridal magazines she says she wants him to please have a brief look through while she attends the School Board meeting in town, and Spencer, in turn, visits him in his dream when he falls asleep on the sofa, and she is hiding from him on the docks, running around barefoot, always one step ahead, her laughter a dull echo he can nearly feel in his guts. He doesn't get to see her face this time but it's her perfume that stays with him even the next morning when he is on campus and he can suddenly smell it everywhere, on every classmate and professor and staff member, and tries his hardest to forget what he has left behind and fails.

And in July, it's two long, long nights in a row that he goes to church between her soft, milky thighs and asks god for redemption and absolution that refuse to save his tortured soul, that simply refuse to come, but _she_ does, her toes curling up in the dirt beneath them, her perfect back a perfect arch, her breathy moan like a million angels singing, beckoning him even closer still, and it's seven long, long days in a row that he can't meet Yvonne's eyes for longer than it is necessary. And this time, he isn't hiding his awful dreams from her. This time, he is hiding the fact that his traitorous body had liked it.

The moon turns in August, completely swallowing her in the waves of his subconscious, and he stops dreaming about her for a while. It gives him time to breathe but without Spencer constantly occupying every inch of his damn mind – or, to put it slightly differently, without the thought of _keeping_ Spencer from constantly occupying every inch of his mind, well, occupying his mind – the realization he had pushed aside months prior catches up with him. Three things he had already figured out: he lost parts of himself when they left Rosewood and Pennsylvania, and maybe Yvonne only fell in love with him because of how he looked in the sun, and he is still trying to turn and shape himself into the man she deserves to be with, the person she sees in him, the person she wants him to be so badly. Another thing he suddenly notices, and yes, it happens quite randomly too while he and Yvonne are out having brunch with a few of the other Planning Board members and he talks in a way he doesn't recognize anymore, like he is merely parroting everyone else around him, one thing he suddenly becomes aware of: the ridiculous costume he had squeezed himself into in a desperate, sad attempt to at least vaguely resemble the man she had fallen for, it's starting to become a little too tight for his liking. The mask he is wearing is slipping off his face, dangerously close to falling and shattering into pieces he knows he won't be able to repair. _I need to let go_ , he thinks, and then goes home and sews his costume larger.

It's nearing October when she decides to come back to him. Standing by the French windows in the master bedroom and her face turned away from him, she doesn't seem to notice that he is completely mesmerized by her dark silhouette. It takes his eyes a moment, then two, to adjust to the darkness around them and it's only then that he realizes that she is wearing one of the elegant dresses he had seen in Yvonne's countless bridal magazines. She is before him as the beautiful bride he had never gotten the chance to ask her to become. _A_ bride, sure, but not _his_ bride and he now knows she will never be. They don't talk, they don't touch, and it's like his brain is punishing him for something he has no control over whatsoever because once more, her face remains hidden from his eyes. Maybe it's for the best – even in the overwhelming darkness and silence, a fraction of him can tell that this is a goodbye of some sorts, that this is the closest he will ever get to receiving an epilogue to their unfinished story. He wakes up the next morning in Yvonne's loving embrace and he is drenched in sweat and tears he couldn't cry, and he tells himself that he has moved on now, from Spencer and Rosewood and the person he thinks he is but can't be because Yvonne needs someone else. He tells himself that he can be happy if he tries even harder than before, tells himself that it doesn't matter how he feels, this is his life and he has to stop running. After that, he doesn't dream about her anymore.

One especially windy and rainy morning in mid-November, Yvonne is downstairs making various calls to various people who might be willing to take her to the mainland after all despite the strict warnings from the weather station, and Toby is getting ready to meet Mr. Warren on Main Street. Last night's storm has wreaked quite a havoc on the little island and the ginger man had gruffly told him over the phone to come in as soon as possible _because there's a shit ton of work to do and we better get started quick_. He suspects that it is going to be yet another dreary and exhausting day, what with the constant rainfall and thunderstorms that don't seem as if they are about to quit anytime soon, like almost every week since the beginning of fall. He doesn't complain though; he has long since stopped complaining. This is his life, the island is his home and the man in the mirror resembles someone he used to know ages ago but who cares. Yvonne knows who she wants and that's what he'll be for her.

And then, out of the blue, like she had risen out of the water in his dreams, Spencer sends him a text message. Just like that. She is not in his contacts anymore. He'd foolishly assumed it'd make him finally stop thinking about her when his dreams were at their worst and completely erased any trace of her from his phone. But he recognizes the number instinctively, as if an unknown and unreachable place deep within him is still vehemently clinging to every single memento of her. The razor slips from his grasp for a mere, tiny second as his eyes land on his phone and he cuts his cheek by accident.

 _Hey. Congratulations!_ she has written, complete with the exclamation point that is very unlike her or maybe the person he once knew better than himself, he has no idea. If he closed his eyes, he knows he would be able to hear her raspy voice clearly, loudly inside his head. Like holding up a shell and listening for the ocean. But he keeps his eyes open instead. _I finally got the invitation the other day. I don't think I'll be able to make it though. Do you guys have an Amazon wishlist or something?_

He wants to ask her: _How are you always around when I'm miserable?_

He wants to ask her: _Why do you show up every time I try to convince myself that I've moved on now?_

He wants to ask her: _What did you take from me when we broke up because I'm starting to think that's the reason why I have completely lost myself and I have no fucking idea who I am anymore?_

He wants to ask her: _Are you happy? Because I want you to be. More than anything._ _Still_.

Holding a tissue to his bleeding cut, he looks over at Yvonne's makeup bag on the counter and his poor heart gives a painful clench. His fears are ugly and they taste like vomit but they are scarily real now, they have crossed over to reality and tainted everything they are and could have become because no, he doesn't love her anymore. Not the way he used to just a couple of days and nights and months ago. And it's a total tragedy, it is, and it hurts, but it's the truth. The ugly, ugly truth he had been trying to run from – the grotesque, horrible truth that had followed him from Rosewood to Maine, to the island and even to the mainland whenever he tried to escape. But he squeezes his eyes shut – he hears Spencer's voice and the way she used to laugh at his awful jokes – and he says to himself, it doesn't matter. It'll get better even though it hasn't gotten better in months. It has to. One day. One day it will.

 _Thank you. No, we don't. I'm sorry I have to ask…but who is this?_ he texts back about ten minutes later and the man in the mirror stares back at Toby with a sigh.

* * *

She quits her job.

It's a total spur-of-the-moment decision that briefly grants her a feeling of freedom, tremendous joy and pride at finally having realized her internal self-worth, at standing up for herself in front of her awful boss, at being brave enough to quit and leave something behind that just wasn't as fulfilling as she had initially thought – and hoped against hope – it would be. But, of course, like so many other things in her life, the relief that is making her lightheaded and almost giggly, is only fleeting and as she stands in front of the boring building that she used to call her own personal prison and stares up at the small window that she knows belongs to her even smaller office, it's panic-stricken confusion and numbing anxiety that come to rest on her mind like a flock of birds perching on a power line.

"Shit," she mumbles, teeth biting down hard on her thumb, as she resists the pressing urge to strut back inside and somehow convince her boss that she didn't _actually_ mean anything she said, that it was all an elaborate prank and that she will for sure be back in her office come Monday. " _Fuck_."

 _What am I gonna do now?_ she thinks.

That particular question, however, remains unanswered. Her countless job applications she keeps sending out aren't exactly met with an overwhelmingly warm and enthusiastic amount of responses either. Turns out that Chicago is _huge_ and home to hundreds, if not thousands, of possible candidates that are all way more qualified than some random Spencer Hastings from Pennsylvania. She has gone from graduating from Georgetown to a glorified internship in politics to unemployment to working for a rundown sales company in Chicago and now, she has once more gracefully arrived at bitter, lonely unemployment. Her resume is pathetic and not even her rightfully earned grades can make up for her lack of credentials and work experience she knows she needs in order to survive on the market.

To put it differently: she is screwed.

"Seriously, if you ask me, you're underselling yourself," Aria sighs a couple of weeks later. It's mid-April and Spencer has just finished celebrating one of the crappiest birthdays in the history of birthdays the night before; stuffing her face with Indian food, downing the bottle of sparkling wine her ex-colleagues had gotten her as some sort of goodbye gift and re-watching her favorite _Breaking Bad_ episodes all by herself. Twenty-five has never felt so shitty and disappointing although she does have to admit that it is at least _a little_ better than twenty-four. She isn't stuck inside her office anymore, continuously glaring at Mona's Instagram feed in envy and desperately wishing someone would finally get rid of the ugly gray bank building across the street.

"What am I supposed to do?" Spencer answers her, phone cradled between ear and shoulder as she slips into her cardigan and shoes. "I have to pay rent somehow."

"Yeah but…waitressing? Come on," Aria responds and Spencer can very vividly picture her brunette friend spinning round and round in her swivel chair, the still unfinished chapter on the laptop sitting on her desk effectively ignored and forgotten. "You can't tell me you didn't find anything else."

"Oh, no, I did." Spencer closes the apartment door behind her. "But every job I was interested in didn't want me. So, again, I'm asking you: what am I supposed to do instead?"

"Go back to sales?"

"I'd rather shoot myself," Spencer replies dryly, nodding at her neighbor in greeting who, judging by the look on his face, didn't find her joke very amusing. "It's not permanent. I just need the money."

Aria gives another sigh, the swivel chair creaking under her weight. "That's why you probably should have stayed at the office until you found something new instead of, you know, impulsively quitting."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Too late now." Spencer shrugs nonchalantly as she fastens her seat belt and puts Aria on speaker. "Hey, how's your book going? Have you made any progress?"

"It's not going at all," Aria informs her gloomily. "I really have no idea what I'm doing."

"Well, that makes two of us."

It's not _that_ bad though, she eventually manages to figure out and this time, the taste of freedom and relief that follows her realization remains strong on her tongue even afterwards, firmly clinging to every fiber of her being. Waitressing definitely is a hard job that is taking a toll on her body and there are some slow, rainy days where she feels as if she is wasting away her potential and all those years of college education but, really, in the end, it's not _that_ bad and twenty-five is still better than twenty-four. Now that she isn't stuck in a vicious circle of living and reliving the same tedious week over and over and now that she isn't stuck going to bed every night, already dreading going back to work the next morning, she has more time on her hands. She has plenty of time, in fact, to sit down with herself and figure out who she is without Rosewood breathing down her neck, without her trauma, without everything that gave her words to hold onto, and discover what it is that she is craving for in her life and even though she still hasn't quite found the right answers that can help her navigate the mess she is in, there is one thing the past year, her old job and all those faceless men in her bed have taught her and that is the fact that she now knows very well what it is that she doesn't want. And that's progress, right, something to be rightfully proud of?

But while the world finally starts spinning again and pushing and pulling her into roads she had been too scared to take, Hanna's and Emily's presence, unfortunately, won't fade away. Aria doesn't bring them up anymore unless Spencer does it first – always casual, always as an afterthought, like she isn't silently licking her wounds and scars and aching for a bone, a breadcrumb – and it seems like she has given up on trying to reconcile them but that doesn't really do anything. Their ghosts linger on and more often than not, Spencer finds herself falling into the deep, dark hole that they have left inside her heart when they decided to leave her. Like on a cue and exactly like the previous year, Emily had texted her on the sunny morning of her 25th birthday and like on cue and exactly like the previous year, Spencer had merely blinked at the black letters and then broken into salty tears over a fucking impersonal " _Happy Birthday, Spence! I hope its's a good one!_ " message. She hadn't answered and she doesn't. Hanna's gift to her, as expected, is radio silence but it doesn't matter, right? Life goes on.

Life goes on.

And so does she.

Her feet are blistered from working at the restaurant and her fingers exhausted from sending out one hopeless job application after the other but she is tough and she holds on regardless, keeps her head high, wants to be a person she can be proud of, wants to be a person she can – maybe one day – love and feel content with. She gets blonde highlights that look terrible and Aria insists that she can totally make it work and she knows it's a goddamn lie but chooses to believe her friend anyway. She stops buying alcohol unless it's a special occasion – and, no, getting drunk to lift her bad mood and erase the memories of her latest Rosewood-related nightmare doesn't count as a special occasion – and glances down at the cigarettes in her handbag and shrugs it off, deciding that she is not quite ready yet to get rid of all of her innumerable vices. She hastily deletes her OkCupid profile and the Tinder app off her phone when the good-looking guy she had been chatting with reveals that he is a cop and Toby's face immediately flashes up in front of her inner eye and he smiles at her, his blue eyes twinkling like they used to, and all she can think of is Yvonne and her stupid white wedding dress.

"That's it. No more men," she tells Aria in a firm voice. It's 90 degrees in Chicago and Spencer is sitting on her fire escape half-naked, balancing both her iPad and ashtray on her outstretched legs.

The other brunette _pfft_ s in obvious disbelief and begins fanning herself as her cat climbs on the back of the sofa behind her. Aria shoos him away and rubs her baby bump. "You always say that."

"No, really. I'm done. This time I mean it."

Enter stage: Elias.

In late June, he starts working at the same restaurant she is still waitressing at. He is their new part-time bartender and a full-time student at Illinois Tech when he isn't mixing drinks. His major is architecture, she finds out one especially lazy and warm night where she keeps him company, and she doesn't fully comprehend why or maybe she does and simply decides to ignore it for now, but that recent piece of knowledge about him manages to turn the strictly platonic feelings she had prior into a low tug somewhere below her navel. It's some innocent quips here, some flirty remarks there, and eventually, approximately one week of banter later, he asks he out and she agrees and they end up making out in his car after their date until her lips are swollen and his eyes turn dark with desire.

It's one of those relationships that are doomed right from the beginning and she already knows by the second time he pulls her aside during their shift to kiss her breathless behind the bar but she is too selfish to stop. She is too selfish to refuse the silver apartment keys he offers her, too selfish to tell him to stop looking at her like she is the best thing that has happened to him this year alone, too selfish to say no when he introduces her to his older brother. So it goes on and on but the excitement wears off quickly and they sizzle out like a small candle that shouldn't have been able to keep its pathetic flame alive as long as it did in the first place. And once the glasses are off and cold, hard reality sets in, she notices what she hadn't paid attention to in a burst of lust and pleasure: his hands are the wrong size and his eyes the wrong shade of blue, his voice in reality not as smooth as it had sounded to her ears and she is _still_ trying to search, find and replicate something she lost years ago.

Later, he is sprawled across her sofa like he owns it and she pulls a grimace at the thought of having compared him to Toby because, honestly, they couldn't be any more different. She sits with him and stares at his face, her heart going a mile an hour, until she finally feels brave enough to end it. To release them and, more importantly, release herself. She talks and talks and doesn't actually say anything valuable at all and it's a bunch of crappy excuses and apologies and, yeah, she realizes that giving him the it's-not-you-it's-me line _probably_ wasn't a good idea because he storms off with a nasty sneer after they fight for ages but it's the truth. It's her. It's all on her. They say people try to find partners that remind them of their parents, right? That people try to find partners that remind them of the first time they had experienced utterly pure, unconditional and selfless love. Same thing goes for her, she supposes, although her parents' house had never been an especially safe place, their love safely locked away with a fine print. No, see, she had deliciously drowned and lost herself in that kind of love much later in life and maybe that's exactly why she is still trying to find Toby in sweaty bedsheets, rough hands and blue eyes of strange men and constantly coming up empty-handed.

So, in the end and it's a scary decision, _really_ , really scary, but in the end, she chooses herself. In the end, she finally comes to the realization that she deserves better than this never-ending cycle, half-assed romances with men who always talk to her like they are explaining something, and short-lived affairs that only look decent in the right lightning, that only vaguely resemble the feeling she once held firmly in her grasp and then lost along the way. She deserves better than chasing after something that is long gone and over, better than begging for closure that she won't receive anymore, no matter how much she tries, because it's _done_ and dead, and he has moved on, probably not even wasted a single passing thought on his ex-girlfriend in years, and she has to learn to do the same.

She used to think how unfair it was that they hadn't ended with a long and all-consuming bang, like a love story as great as theirs deserved to, but with a meek little whimper in the shadows of her dorm room. She used to dream and pout about everything they could have been if the cruel, cruel world hadn't happened to them but maybe, she thinks now as she gives a sigh and steps into the shower to wash the remainders of her latest relationship fuck-up off of her. Maybe what she and Toby ultimately were, was all they were supposed to be anyway. Maybe they were just two kids building castles in the air and running after pipe dreams, failing to admit to themselves and to each other that they didn't stand a chance in the face of ice-cold reality that eventually caught up with them. She doesn't know and it's too late to go back, try and figure it all out. She chooses herself and moves on and that's that.

In August, she usually works the evening shifts and while that thankfully means that she will be spared from the pesky sunlight seeping in through the windows, the humidity manages to turn the air outside all lazy. The pleasant breeze coming from the air conditioning inside the restaurant doesn't really offer much relief either. Her hair is still saturated with salty sweat every single night, the tiny curls peeking out from under her neat bun stubbornly sticking to the back of her neck. She is annoyed beyond measure and her former boyfriend – for the lack of a better word – and current coworker is convinced to make her life a living hell. Elias has seemingly never heard anything about dealing with breakups in a healthy and mature way, especially breakups that involve a relationship that barely lasted for three and something weeks. It's painfully awkward and if the situation were any different, she would probably find it hysterical but this whole thing is just childish. He refuses to talk to her at all which, in turn, means that she has to ask one of the other waiters to fetch the drinks for the tables that Spencer is responsible for. Understandably, though, none of them are entirely pleased with doing her a favor almost every single night and it's just…it's a lot and it's childish and she just wants it to be over already and for that guy to get over it and himself.

Her saving grace arrives in the form of an email about a week later. It's from a place that had invited her for a job interview a _long_ time ago and then never bothered to call her back. She had shrugged it off and assumed they either completely forgot about her or picked someone who actually knew what they were doing when they went in. She has written so many job applications in the past three months alone, most of the time she doesn't even remember what position she had applied for when they give her a pity call back to inform her that it unfortunately didn't work out. It's a job in the health care industry, Siri tells her when she looks up the name of her possibly future employer which sounds interesting and promising enough but, "Why the hell did I apply for this again?" she asks herself with a frown. Siri gently informs her that she didn't understand her question and Spencer rolls her eyes and puts her phone down. But, first of all, it's much better than sales, right, and it's better than waitressing and running around on blistered feet, suffering from constant back pain and an ex-boyfriend that doesn't understand the word no or the concept of acting like the adult he supposedly is. It's better than dragging her baggage, murder mystery past and family secrets into politics as well.

Most, if not all, things in her life haven't exactly worked out the way she wanted them to – and the whole mess with Toby and the other mess with Hanna and Emily aren't even in the Top Five of that very long and exhausting list – so, maybe, doing something different than what she had on her mind when she went to college is another fact she has to make peace and become friends with and then take out for a romantic candlelit dinner under the stars. The job involves a little bit of Lobbying and a little bit of Public Relations and Communication and, besides, health care is a worthy cause. The most convincing argument, though, and she should probably feel bad for making it her priority when she could very well be dealing with people's lives on a daily basis, the most convincing argument is the money and the knowledge that, if she actually manages to get her hands on this position, she will be able to treat herself once in a while without worrying about paying her bills or calling her mom.

Even though she still has issues accurately remembering the first one, Aria faithfully helps her prepare for her second interview and pick an outfit that Spencer merely comments with a fake-smile and even faker gratitude. Hanna, of course, uses the opportunity to haunt her thoughts when Aria hangs up later and Spencer gazes at the clothes her friend has picked out for her to wear the next morning and she winces at both. But it goes smoothly. She is a good liar, a trait she knows she _perhaps_ shouldn't be proud of, and she has spent more than enough time doing online dating to know how to sell herself.

"Thank you for your time, Ms. Hastings," the representative says and Spencer feels her heart sink. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? She has no idea and the other woman's face remains unreadable.

Spencer forces herself to a slight laugh that is both a nervous half-giggle and a tense half-groan.

"Unfortunately," the woman begins after she has finished looking through her various notes and files and Spencer's heart jumps back up at once, right into her throat, "the position you applied for in this facility has already been filled. We called you back, though, because we liked your resume and the first interview we did together. That's why I have one last question: would you be willing to relocate?"

Ah.

 _Relocate to Pennsylvania, you mean,_ she thinks. She had looked them up, read every single news article, review and interview she could online find but, foolish as she is, she had never considered that they might have done the same and found out about her connection to State Senator Veronica Hastings. No wonder they had wanted her when everyone else didn't.

"Uh, yeah," Spencer replies, brushing her hair behind her ear. "Sure. Relocate where?"

But turns out, to her great surprise, that it wasn't her mother's name after all that had convinced them to invite her back for a second interview. It really was just her and her alone. It's strange feeling.

" _Worcester?_ " Aria exclaims, later, and they are on the phone this time but Spencer can almost hear her joyful smile. "That's, like, an hour from Boston. We could actually see each other again. In person."

"Yeah. I guess we could."

Aria huffs, unamused. "Are you telling me you said no?"

"I didn't say no. I said that I'd have to think about it first and they were like, sure, just let us know when you have an answer for us, and that's it," Spencer responds, exhaling the smoke from her cigarette. "And I really do need to think about it because I don't know if I really wanna move across the country for a job that I didn't even remember applying for. Who does that?"

" _You_ should," Aria counters. "You and Chicago are one of those relationships where neither wants to admit that it has run its course and both are too stubborn to finally break up. You need a fresh start."

Maybe, kind of, sort of seeing her friend's point there, Spencer sighs, kicks a rock on the ground like an especially bratty kid and eventually says, in a slightly whiny tone, "But I _like_ Chicago."

"Yeah, and if you really like Chicago, you need to let it go." She makes weird, tiny kissing sounds as if she is trying to get her cat to come join her and adds, "I'm serious, Spence, you need a fresh start and Worcester is, like, _so_ close to me, you could actually be there for _my baby_ when they're born."

"Stop guilt-tripping me."

"I'm not guilt-tripping you. All I'm saying is that plane tickets are expensive for a waitress."

Spencer purses her lips. "That _is_ guilt-tripping. And besides, Worcester is in New England. _Toby_ lives in New England. And I'm doing this new thing now where I'm actually trying to move on and let go of my past and I would rather not run into him and Yvonne and have all my progress go to shit."

"You're acting like he lives anywhere close to me. He is on an island," Aria reminds her. "And who even knows if Mr. Self-Proclaimed Small-Town Guy ever leaves his island, let alone the state."

"You don't know that."

"Well, I just looked it up on Google and, who would've thought, there's well over 200 miles between Cavanaugh Island in Maine and Worcester, Massachusetts," Aria retorts with an audible shrug in her voice. "Come on, just call them back and say yes. Ezra and I will help you with everything you need help with. The apartment. The move. What are the odds of randomly bumping into your ex again?"

Yeah, what are the odds?

New England has a population of approximately 14.73 million. Disregarding crucial factors such as personal habits, visitors and tourists dropping by for a vacation and then leaving again, people working out of state and only occasionally returning, population density and the unlikelihood of everyone always being evenly distributed among towns and cities, that is practically 14 million 730-something-thousand people she could run into on any given day instead of her ex-boyfriend and his wife. In other words, and she is now borrowing Aria's expression from August, the odds of randomly bumping into Toby again are basically zero. She doesn't believe in fate. She believes in coincidences, science and cold, hard facts and factually, there is just no way in hell that their paths would somehow intertwine once more. So, eventually, she stops looking over her shoulder every time she drives over to Boston, stops glancing up in a weird mixture of confusion and nostalgia when she hears a voice she thinks she has mistaken for his. She stops dwelling on memories that have all but faded and slipped through the cracks between her fingers like sand when she thinks she caught a quick glimpse of an all-too-familiar leather jacket in the corner of the street or it feels like his distinctive scent is following her from one Dunkin' Donuts to the other. The paranoia, she supposes, is something that comes with the fresh territory. He didn't want her in Rosewood, a town he had declared his and Yvonne's, when she came back for Charlotte's trial and lied for Ali's sake and now she is venturing into unchartered, dangerous terrain that he probably considers his kingdom too. Well, at least she does.

But the odds of meeting each other again are slim; next to zero, actually. Someone should have taken some time to let the world know about that, though, because just like the universe had unexpectedly shifted nine years ago and brought together two kids whose only connection was a certain blonde and a gruesome murder that never happened, just like the universe had shifted and pushed her onto his porch, packed with some pretty French verbs and some ugly secrets and just like the universe had one day shifted and turned his eyes the most gorgeous blue she had ever seen before he leaned in to brush his mouth against hers. The universe shifts once more, not giving a single damn about facts and logic and odds against odds. The universe shifts and with it, time seemingly does too, shifts back into place.

"Toby?"

She hadn't meant to say it aloud, draw his attention to her, probably ruin his entire day. Really, she hadn't. What she initially wanted to do upon every cell in her damn body standing up in frivolous recognition was grab her coffee in a hysterical frenzy, exit the coffee shop and hurry off as fast as she could. Tell her heart to calm down in-between cigarettes, too, because there it is, thumping against her ribcage wildly, like it is frantically but quite stubbornly insisting on making up for every moment they never got to share. He is standing by his armchair and putting his belonging into his leather bag and he looks…he looks the same, for the most part, and he is painfully oblivious to the expression on her face that she figures must be somewhere between terrified and pleasantly surprised.

Toby raises his head at the sound of his name and his eyes widen. She can't tell whether it's in shock, astonishment or maybe in an oh-god-why-me kind of way. They just…they just widen and that's it.

She steps a little bit closer, her legs acting almost on their own, and his eyes, his beautiful eyes, they are indeed a holding a genuine glimmer of delight in them but there is some dread too and she half-snorts at the irony of it all, their hearts finally beating in-sync again after years and years of dancing to two different off-beat songs. Two panicky birds flitting through their bodies, nestling, crackling and chirping in terror. She hadn't thought about it, _allowed_ to let herself think about it, much but this is certainly not how she had envisioned them meeting again, all semi-awkwardness, polite smiles and the numbing fear of what was left unsaid circling them like a predator. Spencer hooks her thumb through the shoulder strap of her bag and holds her brown coffee cup more firmly in order to keep her traitorous, lying hands busy and still because she has no idea whether she should hug him or not.

"What are you doing here?" she exclaims instead.

"I could ask you the same thing," he says, shooting her a soft smile that she returns immediately and in a flash, his arms are around her in a short half-embrace and in a flash, before she can hug him back and fully realize that he is real, they are gone again. "No, I, uh, I live here. You? Business trip?"

"Me too!" She winces at her voice nearly breaking in childish excitement she _really_ isn't supposed to be feeling at this encounter. She vaguely remembers telling Aria about moving on, letting go and giving herself time to heal. She remembers determinedly telling _herself_ that she needs to learn how to be an adult and admit that he is one hundred percent happy now, without her or despite her or in spite of her. But all of that seems so far away now, like she is watching her past self through a thick shower curtain. It's funny, how easy it is to suddenly lose balance and stand still again. She clears her throat and takes a sip from her coffee. "I mean, I live in Worcester. That's, like, about forty miles-"

"Yeah, I've been there," he interrupts her but it's really gentle. Everything about him is always so gentle. He points over his shoulder with his thumb. "Did you wanna buy something 'cuz I was gon-"

"No, uh, I already got my fix. Heh." She holds up her coffee cup to show him. "I was actually leaving too and then I saw—we could, I don't know, um, walk together? I mean, I don't know where you-"

"Yeah-"

It's momentary silence that accompanies them when they exit the small coffee shop together and he holds the door open for her in a well-meaning gesture and it's the same silence that makes her almost achingly aware of her heart still beating like it's trying to break out of its cage deep inside her chest.

"So, a _Mainah_ in _Bahstin_ , huh?" It's lame and she knows if there is one thing she is absolutely and embarrassingly bad at, it's accents, but she figures that someone has to try and get rid of the awkward air between them. Her joke, nevertheless, entices a chuckle out of him. She smiles. "No, really, how'd you end up here? Are you working for the _Bahstin_ PD now?"

Toby shakes his head no at her question, still with a slight smile on his lips. "No. I'm not with the _Bahstin_ PD. I'm currently at _Bahstin_ University." On her look, he adds, "Architectural Studies."

"No, really?" She thinks about Elias and Tinder Cop Guy and her gut reaction to both, at her attempts to escape Toby's memory and his stubborn ghost chasing her round and round in Chicago and then her pressing urge to end up with some overgrown man-child that had briefly looked like a poor man's painting of her ex-boyfriend and she has no idea what any of that means. Then she thinks about the countless fights they had over his job and how he had never seriously considered quitting it just for her but of course, of fucking course, he would actually do that for Yvonne. She struggles with her lighter for a few moments and, to his credit, he doesn't seem very surprised at her smoking habit, like he thinks that it makes perfect sense for her in a way, and instead cups his hand around hers without forewarning. This time, she does manage to light her cigarette, takes a deep drag and babbles to distract herself from his unexpected touch, "That's _so_ great, Toby. I'm really happy for you. I mean, wow, a future architect…"

"Yeah, thank you," he replies quietly, withdrawing his hand and shoving it into the pocket of his jacket. She can't really read his tone or the foreign expression on his features, can't decide whether his thanks are genuine or whether he is thinking about her dorm room and _you said wanted to quit the force and go back to school_ and _that was your idea, not mine. And that was only because being with a cop isn't good enough for you._ She takes another drag off her cigarette. He says, "You know, it was, it was not…it was not something I wanted to do but then life kinda happened and…now I'm here."

She furrows her brows a little. "But you're happy?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy. I really like it. I mean, I've always been interested in…" he trails off with a little shrug and she only realizes about half a beat later that it's because he knows there is no need to explain his dreams and hobbies to her, the person he had once, a lifetime and a day ago, shared all his deepest secrets and most precious thoughts with. She scratches at her nose. "What about you? Are you back in politics now? Em said you were in sales in Chicago a while ago…? I was actually kinda confused when I heard that."

Of course Emily would gladly talk _about_ her while not having enough face to show up and talk _to_ her.

"Seriously, don't ask. It's kind of a long, boring story," she answers and scrunches up her nose. "But no, not in politics. Not really. I kinda work with politicians sometimes but, you know, it's not like before. My official, uh, job title is communication manager."

"What is that?"

"Honestly? I'm still not entirely sure," she says and laughs slightly, pleased with herself when he gives a hearty snicker. "But it's really fun and it pays well and it gives me the opportunity to be bossy."

He gives her another smile, then lowers his gaze to watch where he's going. "You're not bossy."

"Toby, come on, we're not dating anymore. You don't have to be nice to me," she counters in a playful tone he comments on with a barely visible wince that she most likely would have missed if she didn't know him as well as she does. She twists her pursed lips to the side, sort of regretting her words, and she really isn't doing this to annoy him or hurt herself more than before but her mouth moves before her brain can fully catch up and she says, "By the way, uh, I know it's October and I'm almost eight months late but I'm really sorry I couldn't make it to the wedding."

There is a slight shift in his demeanor and she wonders if she has hallucinated it after all because it disappears as quickly as it came. He merely sinks his hands further into the depth of his pockets and glances up to meet her look for a second. "Yeah, no. It's fine. Don't worry about it."

"I mean it. I feel bad." No, actually, she _really_ doesn't. She doesn't know what the hell she is saying or why in the world she is saying what she is saying. Maybe it's an effort to remind herself that he is a _married_ man now, his wife waiting for him at home with open arms and an open heart, and that she was in the process of – more or less – successfully letting go, moving on, before stupid _life happened_ and Aria was wrong and she ended up randomly bumping into her ex anyway. "Is there anything I can do? Anything you guys still need? A blender? Microwave?" She bites her lower lip. "Baby stuff?"

"No, it's fine. Really. Like I said." He clears his throat, eyes not meeting hers, as he takes his phone out of his jacket. "Sorry but, uh, I actually just realized that I had to go the other way when we left-"

"Oh. Yeah. Of course. Sorry we just-"

"Don't apologize. We started talking and I didn't pay enough attention to where-"

She feigns a smile. "You should—you should go. I don't wanna hold you up."

And they say goodbye and he draws her into another quick, awkward half-hug and she feels eighteen again as she watches him go, watches him turn his head to gaze at her over his shoulder, and she wants to call after him, make him stop walking away from her and ask him something like, _can I text you? Later? And this time you'll actually recognize my number?_

She wants to say: _You know I can still tell when you're lying, right? I know you're walking away from me for a reason._

She wants to say: _Do you finally wanna have that dinner you promised me two years ago so we can talk and you can tell me why you stopped running for Yvonne but you still can't do the same for me_?

But she doesn't do any of these things because her brain stills, clicks, and their conversation, his lies and abrupt escape from her suddenly start making sense and there is only one pressing thought inside her head. She doesn't say any of these things aloud because she knows if she so much as opened her mouth, one question and one utterly perplexed question only would come out of it.

_Where is your ring?_


	2. Chapter 2

II.  
The more I see, I understand  
But sometimes, I still need you

It goes like this: It's Friday night, three weeks after Spencer's text message, and the few lonely trees hugging Main Street on either side are in deep mourning. They keep swooning and leaning towards the ground, their sadness so unbearable, so heavy that it slowly beckons and pulls them back to the brown damp dirt from which they have grown. Mother Nature is in a state of total bereavement and the group inside the cozy restaurant is rudely intruding upon a tragic grieving ceremony that isn't theirs with their constant chatter, their hearty laughter and the upbeat music playing on the jukebox in the corner. This storm, of course, wasn't unexpected. The weather station had issued yet another warning earlier that day but none of the locals currently sitting at Toby's table seem to be overly fazed. An uneasy feeling spreading in his stomach, Toby thinks that they should be though. This storm is quite possibly one of the most terrifying things he has ever witnessed. He lifts his head to catch a peek of the window again but there isn't a whole lot to make out or even _see_ besides the thick fog, rainwater, the dancing shadows of the trees and a dark, almost angry patch of gray and black. A vivid, furious flash of lightning suddenly bolts across the sky then, as silent and deadly as a grave, briefly illuminating the night before crashing thunder shatters the fleeting caricature of peace once more. The female Beagle hiding under the table, faithfully perched by her owner's feet, gives a very fearful whine.

A couple of moments later, the door creaks open, causing the sounds of the storm to viciously explode through the little restaurant and completely drown out the jingle of the bell over the wooden door. The newcomer to their impromptu dinner party is Michael from the Planning Board; a rather lanky, kind-hearted man in his late 20s. He is 'from away' too, just like Toby and Yvonne. South Jersey, if memory serves him right. Why in the world a Jersey native would leave his home and move to one of the most boring places on earth, Toby has no idea, but to be fair, he doesn't remember why he had left Pennsylvania for _this_ either.

" _Fuck_ ," Michael bellows, closing the door behind him. He is as soaked as Toby thinks the streets must be. "It's fucking Judgment Day outside."

The rest of the group breaks into entertained laughter.

"Man, the hell have you been? You're over an hour late," Yvonne's cousin Cameron says from beside Toby. "You literally live down the street. We all thought you weren't coming."

"Oh, I came, all right," Michael replies, eyebrows raised suggestively, as he leisurely makes his way towards his friends. He slaps Cameron's shoulder once in greeting, sitting down on the chair next to him and Toby. "Sorry, man, you know how it is – when the girlfriend's app says that it's time for some sweet, sweet baby-making, then it's time for some sweet, sweet baby-making."

Yvonne wrinkles her nose. "You're seriously gross, Mike."

Unbothered, Michael merely shrugs against the cackles of amusement and grunts of disgust. He nods at the waitress who comes and goes with a glass of wine and says, "Ah, that's what you're saying _now_. But trust me, Phillips, give it another four or five months and you two lovebirds…" He points at Toby with his wine glass. "…will be asking me which app Stace has been using."

Nobody seems to notice that Yvonne's smile falters somewhat as she gazes at Toby from across the table. Toby holds her browns and attempts a weak half-smile which she apparently decides doesn't warrant an answer. He can mostly accept that though; he has to. It's the first time tonight that she is even acknowledging him, the first time tonight that she is seemingly giving up on ignoring both Toby and his entire existence and that, at least, is more than he was expecting to receive. Despite the eye contact she is hesitantly offering him now, he can tell that she is still mad at him. They had fought before coming here, about something unbelievably stupid. Maybe it was her spilling her loose powder all over the fresh laundry or perhaps it was the dirty socks he had forgotten in the living room. He doesn't remember. Although, if he _has_ to be honest, he somehow doubts it would make a big difference even if he could recall who made the first snide remark that turned into two hours of total passive-aggressiveness. He strongly suspects that the general air of unhappiness that is following him on each step is the true and only cause for all of their numerous fights lately. It has started to feel as though it is slowly poisoning every inch of their once so beautiful home and he has no idea how to make it _stop_. Because his misery is irrelevant, isn't it; in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much. He had made peace with it. But he had never meant for it to affect _her_. He doesn't want her to be unhappy.

And now… now this. _Babies_. He all but snorts at the utter irony – in fact, he barely manages to stop himself halfway through and has the feeling that Yvonne is thinking the same thing. They haven't had sex in… has it already been a month? Has it been over a month? Once again, Toby isn't entirely sure though he _is_ entirely aware that this isn't a good thing for a recently engaged couple that is planning on getting married in February.

Before his inner eye, all he sees, all he _can_ see is: _Hey. Congratulations! I finally got the invitation the other day. I don't think I'll be able to make it though. Do you guys have an Amazon wishlist or something?_

_Hey. Congratulations! I finally got the invitation the other day._

_Hey. Congratulations!_

_Hey-_

Nevertheless, Toby clears his throat to shake off the memory and says, "Heh. Well, we wanna get married-"

"Yeah," Yvonne interrupts him. Her tone is strangely mechanical. He frowns at her but quickly falls silent. "Marriage first. Kids later. We're kinda… traditional when it comes to those things."

Michael nods, understanding. "What's Toby doing again? I always forget, man, I'm sorry."

"I-"

Yvonne cuts him off sharply. "He's majoring in Architectural Studies."

"Yeah and I, uh, work for Bruce Warren," Toby says.

"Part-time," Yvonne informs.

"Part-time."

The awkward tension between the couple is more than palpable, even to those, it appears, who weren't part of the conversation on this side of the table. Cameron exchanges a meaningful look with his wife Francis who is seated next to Yvonne.

Michael laughs to bridge the silence. "Good old Brucie," he says. "How's he doing?"

"Uh, good, I think," Toby responds as he tosses another careful glimpse in Yvonne's direction who is, sure enough, still glaring daggers his way. He gulps – audibly. "He's good. I'm really, you know, grateful for the opportunity to work with him. He's good at what he does."

Cameron chuckles. "It's all right, Toby. I'm his friend and even _I_ know that he's a dick."

"Yeah, it's just us here," Francis chimes in. "We all know how he is. You can be honest."

The cheerful waitress comes over to clear the empty appetizer plates off the table, then begins serving the entrées. While Toby had gone with something vegetarian – actually, he had picked the _only_ vegetarian option on the menu – the rest of the group did not. Watching them all inspect their respective plates with gusto now, Toby fights the urge to scrunch up his nose. He doesn't think he has ever been _this_ sick and tired of fish before. Smoked salmon bagels for breakfast nearly every single morning, lobster cream soup for lunch when he isn't lucky enough to be on campus on the mainland, then pan seared halibut for dinner on at least three evenings a week because Yvonne is _obsessed_ – it's like there isn't anything else to eat on this goddamn island.

Toby picks at his fettuccine. "Well, I mean, he definitely _can_ be a little difficult sometimes…"

"A little?" Michael echoes in disbelief.

"Fine, you're right. Definitely more than a little," Toby admits and half-grins when Cameron and Michael emit the same barking laugh. "But he's… he _can_ be nice when he wants to be."

"Yeah. Which is never," Francis adds.

Toby glances at her, amused, but too wise to outright agree with her comment. "He just doesn't handle criticism that well, you know? Somehow he always finds a way to shift the blame to-"

"If carpentry suddenly makes you _so_ unhappy, Toby, maybe you should've stuck with being a cop then," Yvonne speaks up. "God knows we could use one. I don't feel safe anymore ever since that B&E on Boston Road."

Seemingly having noticed Toby's expression, Michael snickers and says, "Hey, nobody said a thing about being unhappy here, Phillips. Toby was just ranting about his boss. It's what we do to survive. Besides, I thought the cops already caught whoever was responsible for that?"

He throws Francis a look across the table and raises his eyebrows expectantly until she catches on. "Oh yeah. I heard the same thing. Wasn't it the Webster's son and his little friends?"

"I don't know," Yvonne answers around her latest bite of crab. "What I do know is that we don't even have a gun in our house."

Cameron, meanwhile, looks at her as if she has grown a second head. "You wanna keep a gun in your house in a practically all-white town? Are you crazy?"

"It's not crazy to me to feel kinda defenseless and unsafe in your own house when your _fiancé_ is barely around."

At her casual statement Toby almost chokes on his pasta. Stuffing their fight from earlier into her bag and bringing it to dinner with them isn't Yvonne's style. He knows that they can both be awfully stubborn and impulsive; even kind of explosive, at times. This isn't something she would normally do, however, and what _he_ does next is not something _he_ would normally do either. It would be much wiser, he thinks, to keep quiet now. To keep quiet and let her pummel him with words. A fraction of him, the fraction that is soaked in guilt, feels like he deserves it anyway. What's some more of her anger when he is the one that had failed her, when he is the one who didn't try hard enough to keep his pain a secret?

But he isn't wise and for the first time in months, he stands up for himself again. He furrows his brow and questions, "What are you talking about? Where do I supposedly go? Every time I'm not at work or at school, I'm at home. With _you_."

"Yeah. Except when you go for a walk. At 9 pm. Alone."

"That's what's bothering you? You do know that I asked you to come with me, right? More than once. And you always said you were too tired or cold or that you just didn't feel like it."

"Did I? Did I really? Or did you always _conveniently_ pick those nights where you knew I'd say no and wouldn't actually come with you?"

Everyone at their table – Cameron and Francis, Michael and the rest of the group on the other side – is suddenly terribly busy pretending that they can't hear a single word of their argument.

"Why the hell are you doing this right now?"

"I don't know, Toby. Why are _you_ doing this?" she replies. She throws her fork on her plate as she heaves an exasperated sigh, then swiftly rises from the table, signaling Toby to follow her with one especially hard look. He doesn't want to. He may not be wise but he isn't completely stupid either; this isn't about his nightly walks on the docks or her loose powder on their laundry or dirty socks he forgot in the living room. And yet he, always the fool, follows her anyway; faithful, loyal, follows her into the abyss and the dark eye of the storm when she simply opens the door, ignoring his half-muttered remark of ' _It's still raining'_ and steps outside.

It goes like this: A burst of lightning welcomes them, streaks across the lonely night sky, spilling its eerie glow across the streets and then an enormous clap of thunder hits that Toby feels deep inside his guts. They should have at least taken an umbrella with them, Toby thinks. His clothes are clinging to his shoulders already and Yvonne is relentlessly shivering from the cutting cold. More importantly, they should have waited to talk it out until they were home. The group inside the restaurant is trying their hardest not to peek and invade their privacy but he can sense Francis' gaze on him. He is reminded of the night of their engagement and the fight they had had right after, the angry thunderstorm outside his trailer, the manic pitter-patter of rain on the roof. Maybe that too had been a sign he chose to overlook; him and Yvonne, they had been born out of pain and disaster, hadn't they, and maybe they were always meant to head back. Maybe they were always meant to fall apart exactly like this, exactly like they had created themselves and each other – in Mother Nature's wrathful, ruthless embrace.

And scared to death in Mother Nature's wrathful, ruthless embrace as they are, he wonders why he hadn't seen it coming from a mile away. Why he had chosen to ignore the decay of everything they used to be for so, so long. He doesn't know why he knows that they are slowly, steadily reaching the end now; doesn't know _how_ he knows that this is the final act, the grand big finale, and after that, there will be nothing left to do but take a bow and leave the stage. And this realization, no matter how much it aches, is not the scary part. He had made peace with it ages ago, hadn't he? Made peace with staying and swallowing his own misery just to make the amazing woman, the wonderful person, in front of him happy, despite knowing in his heart that it wouldn't be enough. Because sometimes, love just _isn't_ enough. The scary part though, the part that nearly tears him in two, is the look in her eyes. She knows. _She knows_.

"What's going on?"

"Why were you looking at Spencer's Instagram yesterday?" A brief flash of lightning sheds its glow on Yvonne's features, revealing a smile. She is smiling; in spite of everything, she is still smiling, and no, it's not a happy smile by any means. Instead she is smiling at Toby like she is finally seeing him for the first time, like she is seeing him for who and _what_ he truly is inside. "I didn't mean to see it, okay? You forgot to clear your browsing history and when I, when I tried to go on the Ikea website to find this lamp I saw at Deb's, her Instagram was the first thing that popped up in the suggestions."

He is silent for a moment as he simply takes in her unsettlingly calm voice and demeanor. "Is that why you picked a fight with me this morning? Why didn't you just… ask?"

"It's my fault, right?" she replies with a tiny, tiny frown and ignores his questions. "We're five hundred miles from Rosewood and god knows how many from Chicago but I'm the one who insisted on inviting her and put her right back into your head."

"Look, she texted me a couple of weeks ago," he explains. "And she said she couldn't come to the wedding and I just… I don't know. I just wanted to see how she's doing so I went on her Instagram profile. That's really all there is to it and the only time it happened."

She snorts. "What is it with Spencer _always_ bringing out the worst parts of you, Toby?"

"What is that even supposed to mean?"

"Why didn't you tell me she texted you?" she asks and he wishes she would let go of her anger like she is quite obviously meaning to, let it break out of her, because her tranquility in the face of the storm, in the face of the topic of hand, in the face of _him_ is disturbing. "Why didn't you tell me that you wanted to see _how she's doing_ and went on her Instagram?"

"Why—because I didn't think it was a big deal?" he answers. "She said she couldn't come and congratulated us, I replied and that's literally it. It was just a text, okay? We aren't, I don't know, secretly talking or whatever you're accusing me of. We haven't seen each other in over a year."

"Why do you feel the need to lie about the _stupidest_ things when it comes to _her_?" she shoots back. "Why would you keep an innocent text from me if it didn't mean anything to you?"

"Why are you blowing this out of proportion?"

"Yeah, I'm not blowing this out of proportion and I'm not gonna let you weasel your way out of this again," she spits. "Don't act like you don't know that this isn't about some stupid text or your stalking your ex on Instagram, it's – it's your walks at night and you telling me you have class when you don't just so you can spend more time on campus. It's you pretending to be tired so you don't have to _fuck_ me. You're unhappy? Fine. Talk to me instead of being a passive-aggressive dick. What did I do wrong? "

He looks at her, a bottomless pit opening in his stomach. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"There has to be _something_ because I look at you and I… I see a stranger. I have no idea who you are anymore. I have no idea what's going on inside your head and you refuse to let me in no matter how much I try," she says, knitting her dark brows. _Game's over_ , he thinks, panicking, _the mask is off, she's seeing right through you_. "I thought we wanted this. I thought we both wanted this life together and now you're-"

"We didn't."

She scoffs. "No, Toby. You don't get to do this-"

"But we didn't," he interrupts her as softly as he can. "When we were talking about leaving, I wanted to go to Camden. Do you remember that? I wanted Augusta. Rockland. Anywhere but this fucking island. I didn't wanna live in a town that's smaller than Rosewood on a bad day."

She glowers at him. "You should've said something then."

"I _did_. Maybe I wasn't persistent enough, maybe I gave in too easily, but I did and you got mad at me every single time 'cuz you keep making decisions without asking me first," Toby says, desperate, "and I… I learned to accept that. I'm fine. But _we_ never chose this life, okay? _You_ did. That was all you. And I went along with it. The only choice that I made on my own was going back to school and you still resent me for giving up my badge to this day."

"So let me get this straight, what you're saying is that you settled, right?"

"It's called compromising."

"That's coward's language for settling and you know it," Yvonne responds in a biting tone, her brown eyes piercing through him. "You settled for this island. You settled for this town. You're settling for a wedding ceremony you wanted to go differently."

Unsurprisingly, his first instinct is to flee.

Surprisingly, he doesn't listen.

"How can you seriously stand there and say that with a straight face?"

" _Stop deflecting_ ," she hisses as lightning cracks behind them. "Just… stop lying to me. Please. I'm _so_ tired, Toby. I'm so tired of excuses and you agreeing with everything I say just 'cuz you think that's what I need to hear. Please, just once, _talk to me_."

" _This_ ," he says, pointing between them slowly. " _This_ is what I was trying to avoid. I didn't want us to fight. So I… yeah, I compromised. I accepted. I hate this island. I really, really hate this island. But it's not a big deal, okay? You're happy here. It's what you want and I can live with that. I can adapt."

"It's what _I_ want and you can settle." She is smiling again and it looks like a grimace; as though she is in actual, physical pain that is pulsing through her with every word she says and he feels his heart sink, reaches for his arm in comfort but his hand meets with nothing but cold air when she takes a calculated step back. She adds, thoughtfully, "Just like you settled for a woman who doesn't know how to make you happy anymore because the one you actually wanted got away."

He gapes at her and remains utterly silent, not knowing if she is right, if she is telling the truth like it is, if she is overinterpreting a stupid text about Amazon wishlists and wedding invitations because he doesn't know who he is, what he wants, what he desires. And lying, lying feels so pointless now – lying and hiding and running feels pointless now that they are so very exposed in the eye of the storm, in the complete dark where he would go to tuck away his secrets.

"Do you still love her?"

The storm is reaching one last big crescendo, just like they are, and the rain is flying in from all directions, lightning dancing in the night sky, trees swaying and all but bending their spines to the will of the merciless wind.

Toby averts his eyes for a second, stares at the ground, stares back at her. "I don't know."

And Yvonne, sweet Yvonne, doesn't react, doesn't flinch, like she had expected that kind of reply. She mulls it over and says, voice calm and steady, "Do you still love me?"

But here's the tricky thing: he can't. He can't possibly answer that question, can he, he can't lie to her again and again, over and over, can't force them both to live in bleak misery for all eternity – _'till death do us part_ – can't tell her the truth either, break her heart, ruin her in more ways than he already has, ruin her like Johnathan had completely ruined, broken, _destroyed_ her.

So Toby says – he says nothing. He says nothing and his silence is enough.

From the threatening clouds above their heads, lightning flares and thunder explodes through the dark and the wind is howling but all Toby hears, all he _really_ hears, is the sound of Yvonne's palm connecting with his cheek.

It goes like this: they come apart in the storm – _do you still love her?_ – in the abyss they had tried to ignore for so long and never succeeded – _do you still love her?_ – in the numb fingers of the past – _do you still love her_? – in the bitter rain washing off the leftovers of lighter, happier times. The end, _their_ end, it's not neat or tied with a bow but messy and abrupt, like a cheerful song cutting off prematurely when there was so much more to hear.

It goes like this: she abandons him by the restaurant, still so very calm, still so very quiet, makes it abundantly clear that she won't hesitate to call the cops on him if he decides to follow her to their house and Toby doesn't have anywhere to go now, does he? He doesn't have a _home_ and maybe, he thinks as he watches her slam the car door shut, maybe he never truly did; maybe he was always just a visitor, always a guest that was tolerated in her kingdom as long as he followed the unspoken rules. And now he had broken them – broken _her_.

It goes like this: the next day, Yvonne says she doesn't believe in handing out second chances like candy – she unceremoniously shoves the first bag onto the front porch and it feels as though the entire neighborhood is watching them – Yvonne pushes him out of the way, pushes his sorry excuses and explanations out of the way and says she doesn't think there is anything left to fix now – she carries the second bag onto the front porch and Francis glowers at Toby from behind her sister-in-law – Yvonne catches Toby's pained gaze in her determined one and says that she understands being confused, understands being scared, understands cold feet but she says she doesn't understand how he could hesitate yet again when she already forgave him the first time he had – she throws the third bag onto the front porch and ignores his pleas, ignores his attempts to talk it out – Yvonne raises her voice for the onlookers, her friends, and says that she should have done this over a year ago when he had proposed and made up lies about her place in his life even though she always had the feeling that it wasn't true – she proceeds to throw the final bag onto the front porch and walks right past him, back into the house – Yvonne says that she has never hated anyone in her life but she really hopes that he and Spencer end up happy in a ditch somewhere where nobody can find them until they _starve_ to death.

It goes like this: the following week is a blur. He doesn't drink – but he drinks a lot. He doesn't plead – but he pleads a lot. He doesn't try – but he tries a lot; tries to reason, tries to fix, tries to rewind and take back the words he had said, the words he had swallowed, the words he had felt.

And he is met with silence, rejection, fails over and over until one evening where Bruce Warren stops his truck in front of the cottage, gets out with a sigh and suddenly grabs Toby by the back of his neck like a cat would pick up her litter. "You're making a goddamn fool out of yourself, Tobias," he says in a hiss as he shakes his head and pushes Toby towards the car. "Get in."

It goes like this: Toby sleeps – sleeps for a long time, for what feels like _days_ , months, and wakes up with a hangover from hell on Bruce Warren's sofa.

"I got no idea what you did 'cuz I don't care enough to follow gossip," Mr. Warren grumbles and hands the younger man a cup of coffee. "But even I can tell that you fucked up."

"I know," Toby responds quietly, takes a sip from his coffee.

"Some people are made for this shitty town and some aren't," Mr. Warren continues and hands the younger man a plate with a ham sandwich. "And _you_ have always been in the latter category. I could already tell when I first met you."

"I know," Toby responds quietly, bites into his sandwich.

"Do you think you can fix this?"

Toby looks up at him with his mouth full but keeps silent.

"Let me do that again," Mr. Warren sighs. "Do you _wanna_ fix this?"

And again, Toby keeps silent.

"Well, you right, it's none of my business. You can stay here long as you keep showing up at work." Rising from the arm rest of the sofa, Mr. Warren stretches his limbs and stares out of the window. "But in my humble opinion, I'd suggest getting out of here. This town's gonna end up driving you crazy if you hate it that much. I'm speaking from experience."

"I…" Toby swallows the food in his mouth. "I don't have anywhere to go."

Mr. Warren chuckles. "Know what my wife did when she left?" he asks and Toby shuffles his feet, averts his eyes, feeling deeply uncomfortable. "She got a goddamn map and picked the first town she thought had a _pretty_ name 'cuz she said anywhere's better than this island. She's in Bumfuck, Iowa now, last time I heard. Do you wanna go to Bumfuck, Iowa?"

"No."

"No," Mr. Warren repeats and nods wisely. "Take the ferry. Go to the mainland. Find yourself a job. See where you end up going. Maybe it'll be Portland or Augusta or maybe you'll listen to Georgie, buy a map and find a city with a pretty name, huh?"

It goes like this: gossip travels fast in towns where people have to find something to keep themselves entertained with and Toby has a hard time getting off the island without curious eyes following his each and every step. Part of him is sort of grateful for the unwanted attention though because it keeps him busy and distracted; he still doesn't know how he feels, how he is _supposed_ to feel; still doesn't know what to think, what he is _supposed_ to think; still doesn't know what to say, what he is _supposed_ to say. So he writes Yvonne a letter that he knows she won't read, black ink spilling one apology over the other that he knows she won't care about, slides it under the front door whose locks he knows she has already changed, and then he, and then he…

It goes like this: he runs away. He flees. Like every fucking time in his life. He _flees_.

It goes like this: he watches the island grow smaller and smaller, watches where he knows their – _her_ – cottage is, bends over the railing of the ferryboat and throws up into the water. Out of relief, out of sadness, out of second doubts. He has no idea. He has absolutely no fucking idea.

It goes like this: he thinks of Mr. Warren and his ex-wife Georgie, later, when he is on campus because he still hasn't figured out what to do – how to feel, what his life even means now that he has wrecked Yvonne's – and in a brief moment of impulsiveness that he will certainly call stupidity about a month later, he googles a list of cities by population in New England and reads through the results with furrowed eyebrows and yet another ugly pit opening up in his stomach.

It goes like this: he had left the neighborhood and it wasn't enough, and then he had left town and it wasn't enough, and then he had left the island and it wasn't enough. So he leaves – leaves Maine in a crowded bus with all of his belongings shoved into four lousy bags, with all of his worries and uncertainties shoved into his heart. He leaves Maine. And he doesn't come back.

Almost an entire year later – an entire year of rapidly cycling through fatigue, restlessness and the permanent feeling like he is lost and wrong – Toby is in Boston, plagued by guilt. He had left Maine, left _Yvonne_ , and apparently managed to pick the _one_ city in the goddamn world that would lead him back to the other woman he had _also_ tried to run from.

And it's not like he doesn't care because he definitely _does_ (still – even though he shouldn't) and it's not like he isn't completely overwhelmed by the scent of nostalgia assaulting his nostrils or by the memories of a way different time dancing in excited pirouettes in the rooms of his conscious because he definitely _is_ (still – even though he shouldn't) but after the initial surprise at seeing Spencer's face again and hearing her voice dies down somewhat, it's replaced by fear.

Fear at knowing that she is right _here_ now, only an hour away, making it next to impossible for Toby to hide, repress and attempt to forget and move on this time, and after _that_ fear fades as well, fades into careless gray, all that is left in his hold is a gripping sense of confusion.

Because he had lied to her and he doesn't know why. It would have taken him thirty seconds, maybe a minute or two, to stop her nervous ramblings and correct her assumptions – _yeah, see, funny story, actually, and I thought you already knew, but the wedding never happened. Yes, I absolutely am a despicable person for breaking Yvonne's heart about four months before we were supposed to commit for life, why are you asking?_ – and he just… hadn't managed to get any of these words past his lips, hadn't felt brave enough to confess his failure at life _and_ love, hadn't owned up and admitted to his sins. Not with her eyes glued to him, slightly widened, sincere and innocently curious and so much more breathtaking than all those nights he had dreamed her in the past year. So he had decided to lie to her face instead and he doesn't comprehend why. Now, he _is_ perfectly aware that it's not exactly a talk he would have been able to rush through in front of an overpriced coffee shop – _I think she fell in love with me because of the person she wanted to see but she didn't notice that I stopped being that man the second we left Rosewood until it was too late. And I think I fell in love with her because I somehow talked myself into believing that we could, maybe one day, feel close enough to what_ you _and I had years ago… anyway, do you want another cup of coffee?_ – but the fact that he hadn't given her a line of truth feels like a slap to their – _whose? Spencer and his? Yvonne and his? What is the difference anyway?_ – memory. He had lied to her and he still doesn't get _why_.

Toby doesn't dream about her again and he doesn't have to. Ghosts aren't an issue now that she is real, now that she is _here_. She had always been especially talented at finding the secret hiding spots within his heart and carefully, skillfully, luring him out of there like a trapped animal – he inevitably thinks of Yvonne and flinches – and it appears that she hasn't entirely lost that ability after all. A week and some after their awkward encounter in the streets of Boston – _Bahstin_ , she laughs inside his head and he pushes both of them, Yvonne and Spencer, out of his mind – his phone buzzes with a call on his makeshift nightstand beside his bed. If he has to be honest, he is only half-surprised at the familiar number flashing on his screen when he walks to pick up his phone. They haven't had a real conversation in over two years, probably longer, and maybe he doesn't know her as well as he once did put part of him had expected – dreaded even – her to figure it out and call. He just hadn't thought it would take her this long.

"Yeah?"

"Why did you lie to me?" Spencer demands to know at once, skipping the short greeting, the polite small talk from the week before and skipping the friendliness too. Despite the harshness of her words, she doesn't seem angry with him or anything and yet her tone is stuck in a place he used to call _Spencer's Interrogation Mode_ half a lifetime ago. It's impersonal, almost, like they are mere strangers now – and maybe that's all they are.

Toby doesn't know how or _what_ to feel so instead he states, rather dryly too, "It's 7:30 in the morning."

"Yeah. On a weekday. I figured you'd be awake," Spencer replies. Judging by the sounds in the background of the call, she is in her car, most likely on her way to work. The car radio is playing some relaxing tunes but she is far from relaxed because she repeats, a bit more firmly, as though she doesn't have any intentions of letting this go unanswered, "So why did you lie to me?"

_That's what I'm trying to figure out_ , Toby thinks.

"I know we're not together anymore," she then continues, seemingly mistaking his momentary silence for defensiveness instead of the confusion it truly is. "I know we're not even friends and you don't owe me an explanation and I _probably_ need to learn to mind my own business. But all that's been bothering me since last week is that you didn't feel the need to let me know that you never got married and I… why did you lie, Toby? Why the hell was that necessary?"

With an internal sigh, he plops down in his bed. "I don't know," he finally admits, his fingers toying with the soft fabric of his comforter as he struggles to come up with an excuse that will give them both a piece of calm. "It's a breakup. It's not something I felt comfortable discussing out in the open street between a cup of coffee and a cigarette."

"I know and I get that. I do. Talking breakups is never easy. But thing is, I didn't expect that from you, okay? At all. A small sentence would've been more than enough," she counters. "One little sentence and I would've dropped it. Immediately. You're acting like I, like I – I don't know, like I would've started psychoanalyzing you or Yvonne or your entire relationship."

He blinks. "You're kidding, right? You absolutely _would_ have tried to psychoanalyze me and-"

" _Fuck you_."

His eyebrows shoot up. "Excuse me?"

"Oh my god. _Oh my god_. I'm _so_ sorry. I didn't mean you. I meant the _complete moron_ in his Nissan in front of me." She gives a chuckle at herself and in his head, her voice from two years ago says, _I curse a lot, it's very therapeutic_ , and he exhales another sigh and quickly whisks the memory away. "Okay, look, you're right. I probably would've started asking a million questions you aren't ready for but… you were supposed to get _married_. You were supposed to get married and have beautiful babies and be happy. With Yvonne. I really, _really_ wanted that for you."

This is Spencer: she always _wants_ and she always _plans_ and he doubts that she is doing this out of malice or the desire to seize control over what cannot possibly be controlled but time begins ticking backwards anyway, not giving a single shit. His heart is a weird creature, jumping back and forth and then _back_ and even further back, because one moment he is here, sitting on his bed, the next he is in her dorm room, their insecurities like a fortress between them. One moment he is in Rosewood and they are fighting – _which time? Every single one_ – and the next she is leaning against his truck and accusing him of running away – _from Yvonne or from her? Doesn't matter; it's the same thing_ – and it's funny, how he can exist in two, three, four places at once without her noticing anything at all; exist in the broken parts of what used to be and then dissolved while she has absolutely no fucking idea.

Toby says, unsure which version of her he is really addressing and unsure which version of _him_ he is talking for, "Well, uh, I'm sorry I disappointed you?"

Spencer groans, annoyed. "That is _so_ not what this is about," she responds. "I'm not trying to be a control freak and I'm not trying to be irritating. Or a, a crazy obsessed ex-girlfriend who doesn't understand what boundaries are. All I'm saying is that I wanted you to be happy and-"

"But I _am_ happy, Spencer," he interrupts her quietly. _This_ is what he was trying to prevent. They are mingling in each other's lives again and slipping back into the comfort of the old where they can speak freely, yes, but just as freely let what was unresolved taint the present. "I never claimed it was… perfect but I was happy back then and I'm happy now. I didn't plan on coming to Boston. I didn't plan on being in school at twenty-six. And I sure as hell didn't plan on our relationship ending when I proposed to Yvonne. I don't know what you want me to say here. I'm sorry you had different plans for my life but it is what it is."

But her only answer to that is silence. He can nearly see her purse her lips like she does – _did? does? did?_ – when she is mad at him.

"I thought you already knew," he adds when she remains unresponsive. "I swear I didn't lie on purpose. I didn't even _mean_ to lie. I just… I thought you already knew and then you started talking about the wedding all of the sudden and I… and I thought it'd be smarter to let you think it really happened than, you know, talking about this past year in the middle of the street."

"Yeah, well," she begins wryly, taking a languid sip from her coffee. "I didn't. Nobody exactly bothered with letting me know. I'm sure Emily has a valid excuse for forgetting though."

Feeling more than baffled, Toby furrows his eyebrows. Granted, he doesn't see Emily as often as they would like, what with him in Boston and the brunette living in New York but they still talk. Just a couple of weeks ago, they had talked on FaceTime and yet he doesn't recall her saying anything about a shift in her and Spencer's friendship. He doesn't have an explanation for the little driblets of venom – and, he thinks, obvious _hurt_ that she is trying to conceal as best as she can – in Spencer's voice.

"What happened between you guys?"

"Who? Emily and me? Take a wild fucking guess," she replies in the same dry tone from before and once again, Toby feels a violent pull somewhere in his guts and he is transported back to a time past, back to Rosewood, back to hell, where he watches Hanna and Caleb hold hands on the sidewalk across the precinct. He feels his stomach drop, then boil with anger, but just like he had done that night, he shakes it off, shakes his head, swallows it down, down, down. "It doesn't matter anyway. Did you really think that your little lie wouldn't come up eventually?"

"I, um, I didn't think we'd… I didn't think we'd see each other again after last week."

She laughs. It's not genuine. "I forgot how brutally honest you can be."

"Please don't."

"Don't what?"

"You don't get to be mad at me right now, Spence." _Spence_. He squeezes his eyes shut, sort of wishing he hadn't said that. It seemingly isn't lost on her either; her reply consists of a half-amused snort that is drenched in so much sarcasm that Toby winces. He decides to ignore it and says, "We haven't talked in two years. I'm sorry I lied, okay? I'm sorry I wasn't ready to… we haven't talked in _two years_."

"Yeah. Already got it the first time. You don't have to say it _twice_ in _one_ sentence."

"I just…"

"You just… what, Toby? Need me to understand that we aren't friends anymore?" she suggests as he trails off helplessly and watches the rest of the sentence slip from his fingers, float in the air. She sounds almost but not quite nonchalant; almost but not quite unbothered. "That we are basically nothing except exes? No, wait, I suppose Yvonne's _the_ ex now. Let me rephrase: you need me to understand that we're nothing but old high school sweethearts now, right?"

He knows what she is doing. She feels hurt by his choice of words, maybe by everything that he has managed to utter aloud. By him setting boundaries she wasn't expecting to find, by him keeping his physical and, more importantly, emotional distance. And now she is on the defensive… on the _offensive_. It's not unfamiliar: he has met this side of her before. At times in brief sparks behind her eyes when they fought in loud, trembling voices; sometimes in those moments with her family and especially her father that Toby had unwillingly or purposely walked into; sometimes on days where she and Emily were yelling at each other about Alison again. But Toby had never really been on the receiving end of her tornado-like tendencies. Well, until now, it seems. _Times do change._

"That's not what I meant. I…" He sighs, rubbing his forehead. "Can we please not fight? We've done _a lot_ of that when… I really don't wanna fight right now."

She exhales, softens. "I don't wanna fight either," she says gently. "It's… I was hurt when you didn't tell me. I know it's irrational but I was really, _really_ hurt when you lied to me, Toby. But what I said is the truth, right? We _are_ nothing." She laughs and he becomes painfully aware of the missing fragments of his heart because her pretty voice is echoing and echoing through the emptiness. He then thinks of Yvonne, thinks of what he had done to her by clinging to something that is gone, by loving and holding onto a memory he had no business getting lost in. He tells his heart to quiet down. "We really are nothing. We're not friends. We aren't _anything_. And I thought I was fine but I guess, even years later, it's still hard to accept that I'm not the person you talk to about your life anymore."

Toby doesn't know what she wants him to say. He had never been able to name the pestiferous feelings she has put into words but it's not new. He has no idea what he could offer to fix it though, to fix _them_ , not with Yvonne on his mind and the guilt rising in his throat like bile.

"Allow me to make it worse," Spencer says after a few long beats of silence. He can hear her open her car door, presumably exit, and close it again. "Do you wanna have dinner with me?"

Toby, who had been on his way to the kitchen to grab his lunch from the fridge and shove it into his bag, suddenly halts in his steps. "Huh?"

"Dinner, drinks, coffee. Whatever makes it less awkward," she responds in a tone he has a tough time reading. "We've already established that we aren't friends and you also let me know that you were planning on avoiding me forever after last week. But I'm still stubborn and I want us to be friends. I think dinner's a good start for that."

"You want us to have dinner?"

"Yeah? Why are you so surprised? Is it only acceptable if you're the one asking me out?"

"What?"

She sighs. "You promised me dinner two years ago, remember?"

_That was before you started dating my friend and I proposed to Yvonne when I really shouldn't have and we all got caught up in some weird, off-beat, five-way tango_ , he thinks then clears his throat, trying to remind himself that the past is the past and they are not. Not anymore.

Toby hesitates, slipping into his shoes. "Do you really think that's a good idea?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" Spencer replies. "It's only dinner."

"I don't know, Spencer. It just sounds like it has the potential to become really complicated."

She says, and of course he can't see her face but he is almost certain that it comes with one of those crooked half-smiles that he used to adore, "Well… we'll deal with that when it happens."

And Toby knows without knowing that he has already lost the battle.

So on the following Sunday, he watches Spencer pour a ridiculous amount of sugar into her mug. They had decided on a small coffee shop in Boston; coffee sounded way less awkward than drinks – alcohol and nostalgia is never a good combination anyway – and way more casual than dinner. Satisfied, Spencer returns the sugar dispenser to the table and begins stirring her coffee – clockwise, then counterclockwise – and takes a small sip. Wrinkling her nose, she immediately shudders in disapproval and reaches for the sugar again.

"No, it was definitely, uh, _something_ ," she continues her story as she casually shakes the object in her grasp. "I haven't gotten any sleep in over thirty-six hours because I had no idea that labor would _actually_ take that long – I know, stupid, right? – and, you know, I had no idea that Ezra would _actually_ pass out and leave me alone with Aria and her superhuman strength because that is kind of a bad movie cliché but it was… yeah, it was something."

On his highly entertained look, and with her spoon still sticking out of her mouth, she raises her eyebrows at him. "What?"

"Nothing," he responds. "I was just wondering if you take your coffee with sugar or if you take your sugar with coffee."

She shoots him a mock glare. "First of all: smoker. Second of all: dark-roasted coffee tastes like shit. It's _way_ too bitter. It tastes burnt. I'm never letting you order for me again."

He shrugs. "You used to like dark roasts."

"I did. And then I grew up and found out that dark doesn't equal more caffeine," Spencer replies and shrugs as well. "Anyway, to make a _really_ long story short, I spent my weekend letting Aria basically break all of my fingers. Oh – and watching Ezra name their baby after Wilde."

"Wilde? Oscar Wilde?"

"Yeah. Oscar Fitz. It's kind of an adorable name. Could've been much worse, I suppose," she says, taking another sip from her sugar-and-coffee cocktail. "Aria really, _really_ likes Poe."

Toby laughs at the expression on her face. "Hm. Edgar Allan Fitz. You gotta admit, it kinda has a certain ring to it," he retorts. "Wasn't Poe born in _Bahstin_ too?"

" _Bahstin_ is right," she confirms with a slight smirk. Then she proceeds to lick some sugar off her thumb – he quickly looks away – and reaches for her bag on the floor. "Hang on, I took a few pictures before the nurse told me to leave. I mean, if you want to…?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure. Why not."

It's almost casual and… and _normal_ , the air between them, the conversations they make about topics that don't really matter. TV shows, movies, stories from work and school, the last book that they have read, their favorite restaurants and bars in and around the Boston area, and Toby can't help but wonder if it's glaringly obvious to her too that they are merely dancing around what they actually – and desperately – want to say out loud. Because here's the thing: no matter how much she insists otherwise now, they have never been friends. Friendly, yes. Best friends _and_ lovers, sure. But never _just_ friends. They hadn't been friends before they spent the entire night at some rundown motel and she looked so fucking gorgeous the next morning that Toby finally felt courageous enough to make the first step. And they certainly had never managed to become friends after their disastrous breakup either when the unbearable emotional distance between them suddenly turned into a much greater physical one. It was the miles and miles separating Rosewood from D.C. – and Toby from Spencer and Spencer from Toby – that had helped them believe that this new _friend_ label they were clinging to wasn't just a complete and utter farce. Meanwhile, though, that's all it had been: a meaningless word they stuck to in name and theory only. A well-constructed lie they had to tell each other and then themselves to have false confidence in the fact that they would eventually move on and reach a point where all that was left unsaid and undealt with would melt and grant them a second chance at mending things.

Toby risks a glance in Spencer's direction just as she takes another sip from her coffee and asks himself what else he might have missed out on in those five years they were apart, what else he never got to see, what else is different about her now – does she still have the habit of nervously chewing her pen when she thinks nobody is looking? Does she still fall asleep on her stomach and wake up on her left side? Does she still consume every detailed movie review she can get her hands on because she prefers being spoiled over going in totally unprepared? Toby doesn't know but he doesn't know whether he _wants_ to know either. He had answered her call last week, had agreed to meet for a casual coffee date to catch up and play pretend, had come here despite his guilt and Yvonne glowering at him from afar – and none of that, he thinks as he feels her gaze on him and he has to hastily fake an overzealous interest in a picture of Aria and Oscar, had been a good idea. It's casual and normal, yes, and it's confusing and it's complicated and he is feeling too many emotions at once.

First: the wondrous familiarity in all the unexpected places. It's the tiny and almost trivial things that shake Toby to the core. Her smiles for one, her throaty laughter that hasn't changed in the slightest. The way she talks, articulates herself, throws bits of interesting facts on childbirth and coffee and healthcare at him and succeeds in banishing the awkward quiet that refuses to leave them alone for more than a handful of minutes. Her voice – her voice speaking his name softly, lips barely touching, like it's the most delicate thing she has ever held in her mouth and she is afraid of breaking it in two if she isn't careful enough. That selfless sort of joy surging through his body when she tells him about the life she is building for herself in Worcester and the glimmer of sincere pride in her browns when he talks about his classes and work.

Second: the blazing unfamiliarity in all the expected places. He knows her smiles still, knows he could draw all of them blindfolded and by heart if someone asked him to, but her face looks different now. Not to the point of being utterly unrecognizable but it's a little older here, a little more grown-up there, a little more… mature. The innocence and roundness of childhood left behind and replaced by years of growth, pain and happiness they had once sworn to spend side by side though, of course, life rarely listens to requests. He figures that his face must look about the same, the lights above their heads certainly not doing him any favors and probably making him seem ghostly pale in comparison. Or maybe they are making the dark circles of exhaustion he knows are forever adorning his eyes look worse than they are. Fact is, it's the strangest feeling in the world, sitting next to a person whose cheeks he would once trace under the covers and having to accept all the changes that were brought upon them both.

Third: the semblance of nostalgia or something he mistakes for it. He feels as though there are versions of their past perched on the empty table next to them. Versions of their past that only exist in memories now and don't remotely resemble the people they are today. He is sure that she can feel it too. She avoids bringing up his lie, Yvonne's name or the countless and confusing questions that are probably plaguing her mind and that he knows he will have to give her answers to eventually. It's likely an attempt to respect the boundaries he had set – _we're not an us anymore, you don't get to weigh in on my life_ – he supposes, a well-meant gesture on her end. He appreciates it. Ignoring the failure of his last relationship isn't a hard nor challenging task but turning blind to the memories swirling around the room doesn't come as easy. He had thought that he was fine with moving on despite the missing chapter of their book. And maybe he truly was – for a while. Maybe he really had moved on and learned to live without her just like she had moved on and learned to live without him. But with the memories rushing back one by one – _do you still love her?_ Yvonne asks in his head, over and over and over and over – and taking down walls they had risen to keep the past out, he is starting to lose confidence.

Fourth: the sweet yearning or something he mistakes for it. Part of him is all but paralyzed with fear at the casualness, the nonchalance, the normalcy. Dead scared of how easy it was to slip and end up back here. This isn't the way it was supposed to go, right? It's like she had said. They _aren't_ friends. Strangers, enemies, partners in crime and then lovers and exes – so many words for two lost kids but friends? They aren't friends. They _can't_ be friends for the very same reasons they couldn't be friends two years ago because a friendship would imply that they grew up, overcame the past, the hurdles and the heartbreak. A friendship would imply that the feelings that used to chase him in his dreams and nightmares have disappeared. Is that what happened here? Is that the truth and nothing but the truth?

_Do you still love her?_ Yvonne's voice questions sharply.

And Toby doesn't – he doesn't _know_.

He heaves out a sigh.

Spencer clears her throat and does the same.

And yet, and yet, and yet… and yet part of him settles, calms at the uncomfortable closeness, at her legs inches away from his under the table. Part of him wants to feel brave and be irrational, impulsive and reckless – wants to extend his hand and grasp hers in… in _something_ , hell, maybe friendship. Part of him is twitching with longing, is lovesick for her or perhaps homesick and another part of him quietly points out that that's the same thing. Part of him wants to catch the past in his embrace, grab the old versions of them that are close-by with words on their lips that neither of them would ever dare whisper now. Part of him wants to rewind, go back and _change_.

_Do you still love her?_ Yvonne says.

He sighs again and proceeds to take a sip from his coffee.

"So," Spencer speaks up as she inspects her brownie. "I told you all about my weekend and the _exciting_ adventures I had in the maternity ward. How was your weekend, Mr. Architect?"

"Yeah, mine wasn't as exciting," he retorts. "I was at work. Handed in a couple of assignments I had to do. Watched Netflix. Nothing interesting, really."

"No college parties then?"

Completely baffled, he simply stares at her until she tilts up her chin to meet his eyes. He gives her a frown and asks, "What? Since when do I go to parties?"

This time, it's her turn to shrug. "I don't know. There's a lot of stuff that I don't know about you anymore," she says and maybe he is imagining things but her voice is holding a slight pinch of sarcasm as though she too is overwhelmed by all the changes, twists and turns, by everything that managed to remain the same when everything else did not. She tries to recover, sits up straighter in her chair and adds a playful, teasing tone but it doesn't work. He pretends not to notice. "I mean, you say you like being a cop and then you suddenly quit the force and go back to school. You say you like Rosewood and small towns and now you're living in Boston."

A pause follows, a moment of silence, as if it's reserved for the observation she can't yet bring herself to poke him with: _you propose to Yvonne and you two decide that you're gonna move to Maine and now you're telling me it didn't work out_.

She clears her throat again, swallowing the words she didn't or perhaps couldn't say, seemingly aware that what she _did_ throw out there was a little inappropriate for their current situation too and opts for changing the topic. "And apparently you're a defender of dark roasts."

"They're not as bad as you make them out to be."

"Maybe you like parties now. Maybe _New Toby_ is into dark roasts and partying all night."

" _New Toby_ ," he repeats in the same tone and he can't help it; he gives a chuckle. Spencer looks pleased with herself for making him laugh and despite the harsh Boston winter, his heart feels warm. "I'm not. That hasn't changed. Most of the people at school are literal teenagers. _Kids_. I'm kind of the old guy around there. Old guys don't get invited to college parties unless someone needs booze."

"Oh, come on," she replies, shoe bumping against his. "Twenty-six is _not_ old."

"No, I know. But to a bunch of baby-faced eighteen-year-olds it kinda is," he says, mimicking her actions when she simply bumps her foot against his once more. "And I can't exactly blame them either, you know? Sometimes I really feel like I've already lived through… four of five completely different lives and I'm still not where I thought I would be."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she responds, leaning back against her chair. "I talked about that with Aria a while ago, actually. This isn't how I pictured my life at eighteen either. Kinda funny how things never work out the way you want them to."

Her words – simple, casual and spoken without much thought – are heavy. Much heavier than she had most likely intended them to and she only seems to grasp the full weight, the underlying implications half a beat later when she falls quiet and cautiously peeks up at Toby from under her dark lashes like she is watching for his reaction. Brown meets blue and blue meets brown and then it's an unspoken _like us_ that forcibly creeps between them and pushes them farther apart. When he stays still, however, only nodding his agreement, she breaks off their eye contact and he gapes into his lap. The fact that she could have easily been referencing him and Yvonne, unfortunately, dawns on him too late – _much_ too late and _no_ , he definitely isn't proud of that.

And he has to admit then that it was a good and apparently intentional segue on her end because when he looks up, he finds her staring at him, a barely-there frown on her features as she regards Toby intently. She wonders, voice soft like silk, "Why did you and Yvonne break up?"

He knows he shouldn't be surprised – it was only a matter of time before she would try to bring it up; she _is_ Spencer Hastings, after all – but he still kind of is. "I – is this why you wanted to have coffee together?"

"It's… it's _one_ of the reasons I wanted to have coffee, yes. But not the _only_ reason," she confesses, crossing her arms. "I know you don't owe me shit but-"

"But what? Why do you need to know so badly?" He crosses his arms too. "What's it gonna change?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I don't know yet," she answers. "It just doesn't make any sense to me. You were supposed to get married. Yvonne was supposed to give you everything that… I wanted that for you. And I did my part, okay? You wanted me to stay away from you and I did-"

"I never said that."

"You did. Maybe you didn't use those exact words but when I came to Rosewood, you made it very clear that you wanted me back in D.C. as soon as possible." She snorts. "You didn't even let me know that you and Yvonne were moving. I'm curious, what else was I supposed to gather from that if not ' _I want you to stay away from me and never contact me again_ '?"

"We were both in a relationship at that time," he reminds her.

"Yeah, you were getting engaged, I was getting cheated on." She shrugs nonchalantly and clicks her tongue. "Two very similar things, I agree."

"Point is," he continues. "Do you really think it would've been appropriate for me to give you a call and tell you that we were moving so that you and I could say goodbye to each other?"

Laughing humorlessly, Spencer uncrosses her arms and buries her face in her hands in frustration before running her fingers through her hair. "I don't really care what would've been _appropriate_ ," she counters. "All I know is that I feel like I've spent basically half of my life watching you walk away from me without saying goodbye. Like I have some kind of terrible disease. Like loving me was such an _enormous burden_ for you. And you know what helped me survive these past years without getting immensely pissed at you for giving her everything that you refused to give me? The fact that you were happy. That you finally found someone worth sticking around for. Even if that someone wasn't me. And now I find out that went nowhere."

"You know damn well that my taking off had never anything to do with you and everything to do with…" He cuts himself off, sighs, stares into his empty coffee mug. "Everything to do with Jenna and my mom's death and my dad and everything in-between and after."

"And yet you fucking followed Yvonne to an island and you couldn't even follow me to D.C."

He scratches at his neck. "You didn't want me in D.C."

"Oh, is that what we're doing now? Are you gonna project your insecurities on me again?" she questions, raising her eyebrows. "Tell me how I supposedly felt about you being a cop? Accuse me of thinking of you as beneath me? I don't like cops, Toby. I never made a secret out of that. But I didn't want more for _myself_ , okay? I wanted more for _you_. I always wanted more for you. You deserved way better than being a cop in a town that abused you and mistreated you and-"

"Yes, and it was _my_ choice, Spencer," he interrupts her. " _I_ wanted to be a cop because _I_ thought it was enough for me. It took me a while to realize that I was wrong but back then it was what I wanted to do with my life. And I never understood why you didn't get that."

"I don't know. Because I thought the sun was shining out of your ass?" she suggests with a grin that isn't really a grin. "Because I thought you deserved better than Rosewood and a stupid job you only took because of me? Because in the back of my mind, I was always so sure that you deserved better than a girl like… a girl like me? And I was right about that, wasn't I?"

His eyes drop into his lap once more, unable to handle the pain in his chest, and he knows – he knows he shouldn't, knows he ought to keep quiet now or he will make it worse but he says, quietly and hesitantly, "You know I loved you more than anything I've ever loved, right?"

She keeps silent for a beat and he glances up just in time to see her wipe away a single stubborn tear that has managed to escape. She snorts again like his confession comes a little too late and he thinks that it probably does. "I didn't. And it doesn't matter now. I mean, what was the highlight of our relationship anyway? When I cheated on you or when you broke my heart in my parents' kitchen?"

"It wasn't always bad," Toby mutters.

Spencer sighs. "No, it wasn't," she agrees, sending him a sad and tiny smile and just as casually sending the panicky birds inside his chest fluttering up his throat. "But you still left."

"Yeah. And you left months before I finally did."

"What does _that_ mean?"

"It means exactly what I said," he responds softly. "I'm not… I swear I'm not trying to shift the blame on you or anything. I _know_ fucked up plenty and made a lot of stupid mistakes that could've easily been avoided but you just… you started shutting me out. Completely. We used to talk daily right after you moved to D.C. and then the last couple of months before we broke up, I was lucky if you actually remembered to text me once a week. And all we ever did when I came over was… well…"

"Fuck. I know," she adds when he trails off. "Look, I wasn't… I wasn't doing well. The whole thing with Charlotte was still very much a part of me. I felt kinda lost. It wasn't _you_."

"I know," he says and nods. "I mean, I know that _now_ and I'm sorry that it took me so long to realize that you were hurting. Back then I… I couldn't see that at all and I assumed that you got tired of me. I was _convinced_ that you wanted more than your stupid cop boyfriend and you had no idea how to break up with me. I guess the, uh, false alarm happened at the right time 'cuz it gave me an explanation for something I didn't understand. Well, _that_ and my own insecurities."

"So that's what happened?" Spencer laughs and it both sounds and looks more genuine now, like she is seriously entertained by the whole stupidity of the situation. "I was suffering from Charlotte-related PTSD and didn't know. _You_ thought I was being weird and distant 'cuz I didn't wanna be with you anymore. And meanwhile _I_ thought you were being weird and distant 'cuz you finally came to the realization that you deserved better than me?"

He grimaces. "I guess."

"Wow. Classic us," she remarks. "We really sucked at talking things out. Or talking, period."

"I guess but…" Trailing off, he first leans away slightly, creates some more room between them in preparation for what he is about to say. It feels as though he is carelessly putting his heart on a silver platter, puking it up and throwing it on the wooden table, right in front of her, and he is afraid of what she will see, of what she might do, of what she might think. He says, "But loving you never felt like a burden to me. Sometimes I feel like loving you is the only right – the only good thing I've done. Because it was the first time I truly felt free."

Spencer quiets, gazes at him, and the other versions of them, the versions of their past that are seated at the table to their right are looking at him too and Toby, he can't – he can't see straight, can't think straight, can't focus on anything but her browns on him, glued to his every word, can't feel anything but her nails digging and digging and digging into his poor broken heart on the table between them.

"You know what's funny?" she asks after a couple of beats, her fingers slipping deep into the useless thing on the table. "Caleb cheated on me."

"That's not funny."

She chuckles – hands squeezing, ripping, pushing – and rolls her eyes. "Caleb cheated on me and that hurt. It really, _really_ hurt. But nothing and no one has ever hurt me like you did when you left my dorm room that day."

"I'm sorry."

"I know. Me too." She sniffles – hands poking, cutting, pulling apart – and gently wipes under her dry eyes. "But that wasn't even the funny part. No one has ever wrecked me like you did, Toby. But no one has ever managed to make me as happy either. And we've been broken up for five years. Isn't that kinda fucked up?"

_Do you still love her?_ Yvonne's voice speaks loudly in his memory.

"Do you… do you think we could've made it?" he wonders even though he knows full well he shouldn't. "Do you think, you know, if I'd been more understanding and you hadn't isolated yourself completely and we actually talked it out, do you think we could've made it?"

"I have no idea," she answers, the tiniest of smiles curling her lips. "I always tell myself that it wouldn't have made a difference. Makes it easier to accept. But who knows, maybe we would have. Maybe there's a parallel universe somewhere where we survived and we're… I don't know, married now? Engaged? Or maybe just living together… on the Bahamas."

Toby grins, confused. "The Bahamas?"

"Why not? It's definitely warmer than Boston." She shrugs, then grows somber again. "But our reality is this one and the reality is that we _didn't_ make it. And it doesn't matter if I wish it were different because it's not."

"It is what it is, right?"

"Yeah… it is what it is." She half-smirks as she squashes the remaining crumbs of her brownie with her fork and squashes the remaining crumbs of his heart too. "But this reality isn't awful either. We might suck at talking when we should but we're good at defying odds. Did you know that the odds of us randomly bumping into each other again were basically zero?"

"Really?"

"Really," Spencer echoes. Then she puts her fork aside, crosses her arms on the table and leans in a bit closer. "Look, this whole thing here, it isn't how I imagined out coffee date to go, to be honest, but I meant what I said on the phone. I do wanna be friends. I know it didn't work out the first time but… I want us to try. Maybe we can defy odds again. Unless you still want me to stay away then-"

"No, it's…" Toby interrupts her and it's as though all his stupid instincts are working on their own, working against _him_ , as they swiftly come back to life under her sudden proximity because there he is all of the sudden, one hand on top of hers, her soft skin brushing against his palm. She doesn't recoil, just glances down for a split second before her eyes come back up to meet his. "I don't want you to stay away. But I still mean what _I_ said on the phone too. This friendship thing just sounds like it has the potential to become really, really complicated."

_Do you still love her?_ Yvonne speaks up inside his head again.

"Well, there's no harm in trying," Spencer says and pulls up her shoulders.

_Do you still love her?_

"I guess there isn't," Toby answers. "I just…"

_Do you still love her?_

Spencer gives him a look. "You just what?"

_Do you still love her?_

Toby decides to shake the thought out of his head, feigns a smile she luckily doesn't catch and then adds, "I just don't know if I can be friends with someone who puts _that_ much sugar into their coffee. That's disgusting. No offense."

_Do you still love her?_

"Uh, some taken?" Spencer shoots back, shoving his hand off playfully. "You drink your coffee with _milk_. Not cream. Just _milk_. Are you really in a position to judge me?"

_Do you still love her?_

He raises his brows. "What are you talking about? You do the same thing?"

_Do you still love her?_

"Crap. I didn't think you'd remember that."

_Do you still love her?_

Spencer laughs loudly, half-embarrassed at having been caught in a stupid little lie and half-amused too. She throws her head back into her neck and it's one of those throaty laughs that rumble like thunder on a summers night, that vibrate through him like music.

Toby watches her then, watches her laugh, snort and giggle with a smile that starts fading away the longer he stares at her, and the sun rises in his stomach, fills him with warmth, safety, _relief_.

He watches her then, blinded by her light, forced to look away in awe, in shame, in both.

He watches her then and for the first time in weeks, months, _years_ , all his ghosts and demons fall quiet.

* * *

It's one of those days.

And not just for her, apparently.

"… and the _worst_ part about being a parent is that you think it's gonna be easy, you know? It's like, he's just a baby. How much mess could a baby make? You think you're gonna rock a cute, messy bun every day and wear oversized sweatshirts and leggings like all the cool moms on Instagram without even _remembering_ the existence of baby puke," Aria mutters while Spencer gazes down at her phone, only half-listening. The corner of her mouth automatically twitches into a crooked smile as she takes in the name that has just flashed up with a new notification.

"Yeah," Spencer says, thumb sliding across the screen to open the message which immediately greets her with Toby's text. _Panphlers_ , he has written. Just _panphlers_ and nothing else.

She furrows her eyebrows in confusion and scrolls up to check what she had sent him some ten or twenty minutes prior. _Yeah,_ _I spent the better hal fof the day yelling at graphic design interns for screwing up our oirder – they said they'd fix it but now I have about 600 panphlers about *STICKLE* cell disease sitting in my office so that's fun. And then when I left boton I ended up getting a fucknin speeding ticket. For the second time this month, BTW._

Spencer rolls her eyes, smiles, and types: _Really? Out of all the numerous embarrassing typos I made, you chose to go with 'panphlers'? Personally, I would've picked 'boton' or 'fucknin.'_

"And then you come home from the hospital and two months later, it's like, wow, sorry, what is your return policy again?" Aria continues. In the background, Spencer can hear what she presumes is the dishwasher and she pictures her friend leaning against the kitchen counter and rubbing her exhausted eyes wearily. "Would it be okay if I let him stay here until he learns how to talk and I actually understand what's bothering him so that I don't have to start crying almost every time he does?"

Spencer places her phone on her thighs, eyeing it expectantly, and leans over to the passenger seat to grab the rest of her belongings. "Please don't take this the wrong way," she says, stuffing her wallet, half-empty pack of cigarettes and manila folders into her bag, "but I was under the impression that raising a baby is something couples do, you know, _together_? Where's Ezra?"

Aria _pfft_ s, annoyed. "He is…" she begins, trailing off with a sigh. "He's a good dad. He really is. It's just – and I know this is unfair – but he gets all the _fun_ and _rewarding_ and _beautiful_ parts of being a parent while I got a perineal tear, nipples that hurt like a bitch and _hormones_. He makes Oscar smile and can calm him down within minutes and whenever I leave the house for a bit, Oscar sleeps through it and lets Ezra work. Meanwhile, when _Mommy_ wants a moment of peace, Oscar decides that she's not getting one. I'm just kinda sick of Ezra right now."

Wrapping her scarf around her neck carefully so as to not take off her headphones by accident, the other woman snorts. "You're sick of Ezra? I never thought I'd hear you say that."

"I never thought I'd say that either," Aria responds gloomily, heaving another sigh. "Everyone's a big fat liar. Having a baby is _not_ fun. I love Oscar but, you know, if I could go back in time, I don't think I'd willingly get pregnant again."

Spencer throws her gloves into her bag and proceeds to down the rest of the coffee in her red Thermos bottle – which turns out to be an especially bad decision because it's not from earlier that morning like she had thoughtlessly assumed but from a few days ago. _Murphy's fucking law, huh?_ She pulls a disgusted face, somehow keeping her urge to violently retch at bay, and glances down at her phone. Toby has texted her back. It reads: _Maybe but getting panphlers out of pamphlets is hilarious. Were you texting and driving? That's kinda dangerous, y'know._

She smirks against her will and replies: _Yeah, *you* would know. Nope, I was at a red light, actually. Doesn't count as texting and driving. How's your day going, Mr. Future Architect?_

"Wow. That sounded horrible, didn't it?" Aria asks.

Shaking her head to get her mind off Toby and back into the conversation, Spencer locks her phone and puts it into the pocket of her coat before finally exiting the car and starting to head towards her apartment building. "Uh, maybe a little?" she admits with a shrug. "I'm not judging you though. You're raising a baby. You're superhero in my book. Seriously, complain away."

Aria appears to contemplate that for a moment and says, "Nah. I'm done for today. All I wanna do right now is drink my tea and enjoy what little time I got left until the dragon rises again."

The other brunette hums, amused, gets her mail and walks upstairs to her apartment. "How can someone be _so_ damn cute and yet _so_ damn evil at the same time?"

"I keep asking myself the same thing nearly every day," Aria deadpans, blowing short blasts of air into her tea and then taking a loud sip. "Did you talk to your mom, by the way?"

"About what? Christmas?" Spencer questions as she closes the door. "Yeah, I did. She wasn't too happy about it."

"Well, hopefully she'll come around and understand that you're not coming to _her_ party because you can't leave me alone with Ezra's pretentious writer friends and my mother-in-law from hell who might or might not be the Antichrist."

"Wait, the Fitzgeralds are coming?"

"Uh-huh," Aria makes, sounding less than thrilled. "My family too. Mike is apparently bringing his girlfriend who is… I stalked her on Instagram and she seems better than Mona but…"

Spencer looks at her phone again. _Toby (2) New iMessage._ "But everyone's better than Mona?"

"You said it, not me," Aria remarks. "By the way, feel free to bring a plus one as well."

"Yeah, no, I don't have a plus one," Spencer retorts distractedly as she opens the new messages. In their ongoing conversation, Toby has written: _Boring. Just studying for my finals next week._ The second text is a moving picture of a baby giraffe struggling to stand on its legs and then gracefully landing on its behind. Spencer can't help it; she gives a little laugh.

"What?"

She blinks. "What do you mean what?"

"What are you laughing at?" Aria asks.

Spencer can feel her eyes widen as though her friend has caught her doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing and that thought alone is ridiculous, right? It's just a text; a perfectly innocent text and a more than innocent gif of a fucking baby giraffe. There isn't anything to hide. And yet her first – and only – instinct is to respond with a blatant lie. "Oh. No, it's nothing. I just got a text from, uh, a coworker. Sorry."

There is a definite smirk in Aria's tone when she lets that sit for a couple of beats and then wonders, "Hmmm… a coworker or a _coworker_?"

"You're not making any sense, _Mommy_."

"I absolutely am. See, a coworker is someone you work with," Aria explains, "while a _coworker_ is someone you work with _and_ wanna invite into your sheets."

"Yeah, right, because, as we all know, sleeping with my coworkers in the past has always turned out really great for me." Plopping down on the sofa and ignoring her phone for now, Spencer stretches and puts her legs on the coffee table. "Let it go, Midget. It's a friend. Am I not allowed to have friends anymore? I told you I'm not dating."

"You just _giggled_."

"He sent me a funny gif. I laughed. What's the big deal?"

"You _giggled_."

Spencer groans loudly, rolling her eyes. "You're way too tiny to be _this_ annoying."

"I'm sorry but I don't have a sex life right now or even a personal one and I love living through you, your awful dating choices and sexcapades," Aria responds, followed by an audible shrug.

Spencer, meanwhile, purses her lips in annoyance. " _Sexcapades?_ Really? That's all you could come up with? As an author? How did you make it into the _New York Times_ again?"

"I need this for the sake of my sanity, okay? My life right now is basically nothing but breast pumps and dirty diapers," Aria says. "You should ask your alleged 'friend' to be your plus one."

"Could you please stop trying to constantly pimp me out?"

"I'm not 'pimping you out'."

"Uh, you hit on a guy for me, like, three weeks ago?" Spencer reminds her as she massages the bridge of her nose. "And just so you know, it was humiliating."

"Yeah and I still don't get what your problem is. He was good-looking," Aria replies as Spencer bites her cheek in order not to say something insensitive and downright mean. "Anyway, I gotta go now. Oscar's up. We're not done here though, Hastings. I'll call you back later and we'll talk, okay?"

"No, we're _so_ done here, _Fitz_ ," Spencer replies slowly. "There is nothing to talk about."

And there isn't, is there? She is doing okay. For the first time in a while, she is doing okay. Not perfect by any means, no, and her life is still messy in a lot of ways – she smokes too much and doesn't call her parents as often as she should; she usually ignores Melissa's texts for days until she can finally bring herself to respond and buys books she doesn't look at because she would rather reread the same few novels for the umpteenth time; sometimes, she orders food just because she wants to take a picture for Instagram and sometimes, she wistfully stares at the lonely bottle of whiskey she is hiding in her cupboard although she doesn't exactly know who she is hiding it from – but it's hers. It's _her_ incredibly messy life and she is okay now; she is _growing_ and _healing_ from self-inflicted wounds and her continuous stream of consciousness has stopped flowing into rivers of denial and that, she concludes with a small nod, must be a sign of successful recovery. Because recovery is this: exorcising Charlotte from her veins and thoughts, cutting the rope the other woman had firmly placed around Spencer's neck, burning down Rosewood's negative imprinted into her memory, banning Hanna from ever awakening a sense of bitterness inside her again, turning bargaining into depression into acceptance into comfort into happiness, and mending broken relationships and hearts, and…

…and yeah, who the hell is she kidding, anyway. Spencer gazes at Toby's name on her display again as she tosses her headphones onto the coffee table. She _is_ doing fine but, honestly, she doesn't know if rebuilding a friendship with her ex-boyfriend truly is a necessary step in the unofficial handbook of recovery, especially because said ex-boyfriend is still such an integral part of the life – and _person_ – she is more than ready to leave behind. But what she does know now is that there are two things that haven't changed a bit since they were only kids. Two things that have stayed _exactly_ the same, no matter everything else that did not. Two things that, once her eyes finally open and she _sees_ and _realizes_ , jerk her back to a different time. A time before the world had cut her skin and he tended to her scratches and wounds, took out a paintbrush, painted a thousand suns and smiles on her mouth and left laugh lines across her cheeks. A time before Rosewood had bared its teeth and swallowed him whole, engulfing him in darkness, and then spat him back out like rotten pieces of meat and she halted, picking him up in her palms, filling his heart with so much love that it destroyed him completely.

One. His voice still slips into a gentle mumble, like warm honey with milk, when he speaks to her. A few driblets of the same bright grins she can easily reconstruct inside her head but hasn't been able to locate on his features so far. A spoonful of timidity, a stark contrast to his explosive impulsiveness she knows too well. A dose if incredibly quiet softness that reminds her of the way he would touch her face beneath the covers, fingertips, thumbs, sparkling eyes and all.

Two. She has no idea if it's love. Whether it _qualifies_ as love. Any kind of love, really. They are older now and there are one too many years between the people they used to be – shedding the same hot tears and stifling their despair in kisses; sharing the same joyful giggles and then going on to celebrate their happiness with love – and the people time has molded them into – he has her number saved on his phone again and she never once deleted his off hers but truth be told, and the truth isn't pretty, they don't actually talk that much. Occasional small talk like today, a couple of mundane texts about everything and then nothing, so many slow-dances around topics that could make stuff between them unnecessarily _complicated_ like he had feared. She has no idea if it's love or affection or respect or – more likely – nostalgia. But what she does know and what has remained unchanged is her heart calling out for him. Still.

And it's – it's really fucking stupid, that's what it is, she thinks, rolling her eyes and lighting a well-deserved cigarette as she googles cute animal gifs to reply and cheer him up with while he is studying for finals. This wasn't how their _friendship_ thing was supposed to go. The only thing that was supposed to happen was her receiving answers to questions that would once keep her up at night and closure that she had long ago learned to live without and not – not _you know I loved you more than anything I've ever loved, right?_ and _do you think we could've made it?_ and _sometimes I feel like loving you is the only good thing I've done._ Regardless, and stubborn as hell, she twists her lips to the side in indecision and proceeds to send him a picture of a puppy falling asleep on a stack of heavy looking books. _Is that what you look like right now?_ she types.

It will pass, she decides and blows out the smoke from her cigarette. Everything passes, nothing is permanent. It's been five years and what was that popular myth again? Something about cells in the human body regenerating every seven years. She knows that it's a misconception, total bullshit that someone made up, probably for literary purposes. But there is no harm in believing in it, right? No harm at all in clinging to the belief that in two years, her heart will have forgotten what loving Toby felt like. Two lousy years and her body won't even know what it's like to be touched by him in places where Tinder dates go to die. Humming and holding her cigarette between her fingers, she stares down at their conversation again, mesmerized by the speech bubble, the three little dots that go on and on, like he is innocently typing away on his phone way too slow or writing her a goddamn short novel. Either way, it makes her nervous; she starts playing with her necklace, irritated, until his message finally pops up: _I wish_.

Then: _Have you eaten yet?_

"Oh, come on. Are you kidding?" she mumbles. "That is _so_ not what you were writing."

A sudden, small and nearly anxious knock at her apartment door is what then manages to yank Spencer out of her thoughts and forcefully shoves her back into _this_ reality. For a second, she is all but convinced that it has to be Toby and that's why it took him so long to respond but of course, it's one of _those_ days and Murphy's law is still kicking her ass. _Anything that can go wrong will go wrong_ , right? And it does.

It absolutely does.

Spencer furrows her eyebrows, standing still and quiet and tall, until she _hisses_ the first thing that comes to her mind, "Did Aria give you my address?"

Raising her head somewhat to gaze up at her frie… to gaze up at Spencer with those incredibly sad blue eyes of hers, Hanna's lips curl into a tiny half-grin that is part bittersweet nostalgia and part bittersweet relief too as though she had been scared that the other woman would slam the door shut upon seeing the blonde again. Spencer sort of wishes she would have done just that.

"Aria? No, she doesn't even know I'm here," Hanna answers, gripping her bag so firmly that her knuckles turn white. Spencer pretends not to notice the tension radiating off her. "I figured out where you work from your Instagram and Snapchat and – okay, I know this is gonna sound creepy but I kinda, um, waited outside the graphic design thing and then followed you home when you left? You drive like a total spaz, by the way. I almost lost you, like, twice. No wonder you got a ticket."

Speechless for once, Spencer simply gapes at the woman before her, mouth hanging wide open with a frown, and then she asks, "I'm sorry but have you been hanging out with Mona again?"

"Actually, I have," Hanna says. "Can I please come in?"

Spencer heaves out a sigh, then steps aside to let her in with a wave. "Yeah… I guess…"

It's hell. Having Hanna come to the _one_ place she had spent weeks crafting, the one place she had built far away from her like a nest, the one place she had declared sacred and free from any memento of their friendship that the blonde had single handedly destroyed, it's hell. She hates it. She hates that Hanna is casually sitting down on _her_ sofa now and still looking around with obvious curiosity, taking in Spencer's modest but homey living room and all those hand-picked decorations she had ordered online or fallen in love with at the vintage markets Aria takes her to on the weekends. She hates that Hanna is wearing her boots on _her_ rug that cost her mother half a fortune and she hates that Hanna doesn't know that Spencer would have preferred if she _asked_ to keep her shoes on before recklessly waltzing in. She hates that she didn't get rid of that one stupid photograph showing the girls and her, fourteen at best, at a slumber party, childishly happy and untouched by life for the most part, and she hates that it's in plain view so that Hanna can _see_ and probably draw conclusions that are blatantly untrue. She hates that she recognizes Hanna's perfume and she hates that she still remembers Hanna's 17th birthday, the day Spencer had bought it for her and Hanna decided it would be her new signature scent. And she hates that the blonde is oblivious to all of it.

"And to what do I owe this honor?"

"Huh?"

Spencer sighs. "Why are you here, Hanna?"

"I was in the neighborhood?" Hanna suggests, pulling up her shoulders sheepishly.

"You literally _just_ said that you were stalking me," Spencer replies. "And you live in Rochester."

"Can you sit down, please? It's making me nervous," Hanna says and pats the empty spot next to her and yeah, Spencer really hates _that_ too. "I just… I came here to talk."

Spencer doesn't move an inch. "So talk then."

"This would be easier if you sat down, y'know."

"I'm fine, thank you."

But instead of speaking up, Hanna finally spots the framed photograph of a time before Caleb and Charlotte in the shelf next to Spencer's TV. Her eye immediately grow soft then, no doubt to prepare for some long, boring speech about how _innocent_ they were and how they all swore to be _best friends forever_ and how that had gone nowhere, hadn't it; how she misses _those_ times and isn't it _really_ and _awfully_ sad how it didn't work out, especially because Aria just gave birth and _we all wanted to be there for each other's kid when we were young?_

"I don't know why you're here, Hanna," Spencer begins before the blonde can say something she isn't the least interested in hearing, "but I just came home from work, I'm hungry, I wanna take a bath and watch a few _Black Mirror_ episodes before I go to sleep and I don't have time-"

"Caleb proposed to me."

There enters an endless moment of silence, then two, and then Spencer starts laughing with her tongue pushed against the inside of her cheek. "Seriously? That's why you came all the way here? To rub that in my face? Congratulations. I don't give a shit."

"No, I…" Hanna blows an annoyed raspberry. "I said no, okay?"

Spencer raises an eyebrow, surprised, but says, "Again: I don't care. I hope whatever you choose to do makes you happy but I really don't care about anything that has to do with you _or_ Caleb."

And there it is, the infamous Hanna Marin anger, because the blonde merely glowers at Spencer, crosses her arms over her chest as well and then spits with so much snappiness that the brunette all but flinches on instinct, "Could you, like, actually let me finish what I'm trying to say before you go all… before you go all Spencer on me?"

"Excuse you?"

Hanna exhales. "Do you have anything to drink?" she asks. "Like, alcohol? Something strong?"

Scowling, Spencer walks to the kitchen and comes back with the whiskey bottle that has been living inside her cupboard. "I don't drink anymore," she makes sure to comment, puts it on the coffee table in front of Hanna and returns to her previous spot by the door.

Hanna eyes the whiskey warily. "It's open though."

Now exasperated as hell, Spencer throws her hands up. "I swear to god-"

"All right, all right _. Geez_." The blonde takes a small gulp from the bottle – while giving a just as small grimace – glances in Spencer's direction hesitantly as if she is contemplating whether it would be smart to offer her a sip as well, then apparently decides against it and says, more to herself and the wall across from her than to the brunette, "Don't you wanna ask why I said no?"

So that's what they're doing, Spencer realizes. It's a game, a shitty play, and their conversation so far isn't at all going like Hanna had planned it would. She shoves aside her pride, her – she likes to think – rightful anger, disappointment and hurt; squares her shoulders, bites her tongue and stares. "I guess. Why did you say no?"

"Because of you."

" _Because of_ -" Spencer cuts herself off, pinches the bridge of her nose. "Okay. Fine. Because of me. I apologize. What did allegedly I do? We haven't really talked since we left Rosewood."

"That's not what I meant. It's – doesn't it make you, like, really sad? That we're like this now? I mean, Aria just had a freaking _baby_." Spencer rolls her eyes. _Of course_. "And we had to make sure that we wouldn't go see her at the same time 'cuz there's, like, so much unresolved crap between us now that we can't even stand to be in the same room together. Doesn't that fucking suck? Isn't that really…"

"Sad?" Spencer offers wryly.

"Yeah, exactly," Hanna agrees, either completely missing the other woman's sarcastic tone or intentionally ignoring it, she doesn't know. "And then when Caleb proposed to me last week, I couldn't stop thinking about us. About _you_. I remembered when we were kids like on that stupid picture and how we'd talk for hours about our weddings and I thought, _Spencer's never gonna come to my wedding. She'll never be my bridesmaid. She'll never be my kids' godmother_."

"You're talking about me like I'm dead."

"Well, you might as well be. In _my_ life, at least," Hanna says. "But I guess that's kinda my fault too so I'm, like, more than ready to take responsibility for that."

_Are you really?_ Spencer wants to ask – she can practically _feel_ the words creeping up her throat one by one. _Because so far, I've heard a bunch of 'woe is me!'s and not a single genuine apology._

She quickly bites the inside of her cheek – _hard_ – in order to keep it down before it can spill over and ruin Hanna's script and instead says, "I don't know where you're going with this. Did you come here because you wanted my blessing? 'Cuz you can have it. I don't care."

"I didn't come for your _blessing_." Hanna _pfft_ s. "I came for your forgiveness."

Spencer can feel her eyebrows curve in disbelief and pull at her eyes as she lets that sink in for a second. "My forgiveness?"

"Yeah?" Hanna counters. "What's with the face? I mean, we've both done stuff-"

"This isn't kindergarten, Hanna," Spencer interrupts her, shaking her head. "You don't have to share everything, including the blame, with me. This is on you. Literally _just_ on you."

"Okay, I know that you're pissed at me and that's fine and we don't have to, like, compare stuff to see who's worse but… you dated my ex-boyfriend." The blonde shrugs. "Like, I know what I did looks really, _really_ bad right next to yours but _you_ dated my ex-boyfriend."

_Oh, that's rich._

"I did." Truthfully, she is sort of taken aback by it all; by her own calm, by the icy steadiness of her voice. So she goes to grab her _Lucky Strikes_ off the coffee table, lights yet another one and inhales the smoke like much needed oxygen to fuel the fire inside her. "I did. And you know what else I did? I _asked_ before I let anything happen and _you_ told me to go for it. Do you remember that too or do you only remember corny stories when they personally benefit you?"

Blue eyes follow her every movement as Spencer walks up and down the living room; blue eyes narrowed in equal parts fury, confusion, distress. "What was I supposed to say? I was freaking engaged. I tried to be mature about it. You should've known that it was bothering me."

"Well, _you_ should've used your mouth to talk to me," Spencer shoots back with a snort. "I can't read minds, okay? I'm sorry for assuming that you were fine with it because you _said_ that you were fine with. Normal people don't pull some weird I-mean-no-when-I-say-yes crap."

"We were _friends_. You should've known that I was hurting," Hanna replies. "Are you seriously trying to tell me that you would've been _fine_ if our roles were reversed and I'd dated Toby?"

"Honestly? No, I probably wouldn't have." Shaking her head again, Spencer halts in her steps and stares at the other woman. The other woman who might as well be a stranger. "But you know what? I would've sucked it up and tried to be happy for you anyway. And I wasn't even expecting _that_ from you, Hanna – you could've said something, _anything_ , and I would've ended it straight away. But you didn't. And now that's suddenly _my_ fault?"

"You're being _so_ fucking unfair to me right now. The only reason I didn't say anything is 'cuz I _was_ trying to be happy for you, okay? It didn't work but I _tried_ ," Hanna shouts, jumping to her feet and frantically clutching her handbag like some sort of weapon. "I'm sorry I slipped up and kissed him when I thought I was, like, gonna die any minute."

"One kiss is _not_ the point. I could've easily survived _one_ stupid kiss. Going behind my back for _weeks_ on the other hand-"

"What are you implying? We didn't even do anything after that!"

Spencer turns abruptly, giving her a look. "You seriously don't get it, do you? You went behind my back for _weeks_. You met up and had your emotional talks for _weeks_. You purposely kept it from me for _weeks_. And when I finally pieced it together, you basically told me that I should've seen it coming from a mile away 'cuz you _never really stopped loving him_ or some bullshit."

"But that was the truth," Hanna throws into her face, her hard gaze softening all of the sudden as if she is now pleading for the brunette to have mercy. "I'm sorry that you were, like, collateral damage in this but I never stopped loving him. Not even for a day. And I'm sorry that you don't understand what it feels like to watch someone you're in love with be happy with someone that isn't you but I'm not gonna apologize for my feelings."

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Spencer briefly lets her widened browns wander to her phone lying on the coffee table still, regains composure fast and meets Hanna's eyes once more, chin held high. "I never expected you to apologize for your feelings."

"Just for my actions, right?" Hanna questions, frowning. "But I don't regret what I did. I really tried to and I really tried to make myself feel bad about it but I just… I just don't? I don't know what you want me to say here."

"And _I_ still don't know why you came here," Spencer says. "You want my forgiveness – for _what_ , exactly? You don't even think you did anything wrong."

But Hanna doesn't reply. She heaves out a breath, looking nearly pained, spins around to slowly walk towards the shelf where she begins inspecting the photograph from up close. She picks up the frame, stares down at five girls that don't exist anymore. Watching the back of the blonde's head, Spencer feels uneasy, now confirmed in her initial suspicion; this visit was never about her, was it?

"I miss you," Hanna then admits, her voice barely above a whisper, eyes stuck to the picture in her hands. "I miss talking to you. I miss calling you. I miss hanging out with you. I miss seeing you. I miss how things used to be. Is that so wrong?"

Spencer first put out her cigarette, then puts out the fire inside her. "You can't miss me. You don't _know_ me. Not like that."

"So please give me a chance to get to know you again," Hanna begs Picture Spencer or perhaps Picture Hanna or maybe both and the other three as well. "I don't – I don't feel comfortable accepting Caleb's proposal after everything that happened between you and me. I can't just say yes to him and be, like, perfectly fine with you not being there for my wedding. I can't… I don't wanna have to choose between you and him. Please don't make me."

And Spencer, she wishes she could say that she is surprised by her words but she isn't, not even in the slightest, because that's what this whole thing was about, right from the very beginning; the five-hour road trip from New York State to Massachusetts, the carefully laid out screenplay and the necessary dramatics with the whiskey bottle and the photograph to awaken guilt and a sense of longing for times they had both chosen to knock down. All of this, Spencer thinks with a frown creasing her forehead and she doesn't know why it makes her so utterly, horribly upset on the inside, it was never meant to be about her or a non-apology she won't ever get. This was always meant to be about Hanna – about _her_ feelings, about _her_ urgent desire to move on and be happy with Caleb without her subconscious reminding her of her old friend, about how she desperately _wants_ , no, _needs_ to be forgiven.

That is all that Spencer is right now: a mere stepping stone in Hanna's road to joy, reduced to a side character. She silently asks herself whether Hanna has always been like this, unable and unwilling to fully grasp Spencer's inner world, unable and unwilling to fully grasp the gravity of her actions. Then she pauses for a beat and silently asks herself whether she really wants to know the answer.

"Okay," Spencer says.

"Okay what?"

"I forgive you. Whatever," she clarifies nonchalantly as she wipes the cigarette ash stains from her dark pants. "You can have my forgiveness if it's so important to you. Go home. Accept this proposal and then, I don't know, invite me to the wedding when it happens. I'll be there."

A smile tugs at the corner of Hanna's mouth. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. Water under the bridge," Spencer says, returning the blonde's smile and waving her hand. "It's been, what, two years now? I'm kinda scared I'm eventually gonna turn into Melissa if I keep holding onto my grudges the way I've been doing lately."

"And you're, like, absolutely sure?"

" _Hanna_ ," Spencer groans. "Please just take it or I'll change my mind and you can come asking for my forgiveness again next week because I didn't forgive you for not taking my forgiveness."

"Okay, I literally couldn't follow anything you just said but-" Promptly rushing over to the other woman, Hanna throws her arms around her neck without warning, squeezes tight, and Spencer's eyelids flutter shut and she draws in a shuddering, faltering gasp, breathes her in, breathes in the people she wishes they still were but knows they aren't, exhales against the blonde's shoulder, against her comfort, against her happiness. Hanna doesn't let go of her, holds her in her arms and whispers, "Thank you. So much."

And Spencer – Spencer thinks: _now that's what I call dramatic irony_.

* * *

Toby doesn't like Christmas parties.

Christmas as a whole had entirely lost its meaning with his mom's passing and his dad's reckless decision to move Tammy and Jenna into their home. Each year after his mom's death had then merely functioned as another silent but glaring reminder of who his heart was so urgently and desperately yearning for, of who his father had so easily replaced. In some ways, Toby muses, Jenna and her mother are scarily alike; they both simple take whatever they feel entitled to. Jenna had entered their lives and taken Toby, treated him like her own personal doll, her most prized possession that she could use and abuse whenever she felt like it, and Tammy had one day casually taken over the seat at the end of the Cavanaugh table that belonged to Toby's mom. It had remained empty until that point – out of respect to her memory, out of habit, out of mere functionality or maybe out of the selfish desire on Tammy's part to erase and destroy any residual trace of Marion Cavanaugh's existence. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. Whatever her inner motivation truly was, the chair had stayed empty until that Christmas morning where Tammy sat down and smiled at her little fucked-up family as though she was just waiting for someone to speak up and question what the hell she was doing. And in many ways, Toby now adds with a grimace, he is a lot like his father too because they had both kept their mouths shut like the cowards they are, neither of them daring to tell Tammy to go back to her usual seat and leave his mom's alone. Of course, it was power play, an act of cruel symbolism that Toby knew very well from her daughter and that had quickly been followed by action. When Toby returned from juvie, he was only half-surprised but completely heartbroken nevertheless to find that she had gotten rid of most of his mom's belongings, stuffing them into the attic or banishing them to the basement where she wouldn't have to see them anymore. The worst part – the part that stung the most when it really shouldn't have because his dad is his dad and nothing about his reaction should have come as a shock – was his father being fine with it. He had called it _necessary_ and _moving on_ , oblivious to the message Tammy was trying to send to Toby: _your mother is dead and this is_ my _home now. You better be grateful that I'm still tolerating you._

Christmases before had been hard but Christmases after that were pure hell.

Celebrating with Yvonne and her family, on the other hand, had been different than anything he was used to from his dad and Tammy; intimate, warm and friendly. She has a big family that she is close to and that had always welcomed Toby with open arms. But even at the happiest point of their relationship, even before old feelings drove from D.C. to Rosewood and even before doubts begun crowding his head, Toby would often sit among smiling faces – among smoking uncles and tipsy aunts, among Yvonne's brother talking economics and her sisters sitting in the corner and making fun of him, among dancing cousins taking pictures of giggling baby nephews and nieces, among her grandparents debating politics, among her mother gently forcing Toby to finish his plate and her father telling jokes before bursting into laughter – and feel incredibly lonely. Like an outsider lucky enough to be allowed to gaze in. It hadn't been their fault, of course, and he had never managed to get over himself and tell Yvonne how uncomfortable it made him out of fear of hurting her (was there ever anything he _did_ feel brave enough to tell her?) but crowded parties just aren't his favorite place to be and Christmas stopped being fun the minute his mom died and he was left in a cold and empty home with his cold and empty father.

Toby doesn't like crowded parties, he doesn't like Christmas and he _really_ doesn't like crowded Christmas parties and yes, he is aware how absurd and contradictory that sounds, given the fact that he is currently sat in Ezra and Aria's living room on the evening of December 20th. To be completely truthful, he has no idea what he is doing here either. He knows _how_ he ended up in this house. After receiving Aria's invitation on Facebook, Emily had packed her things, gotten onto the bus in New York and then called Toby somewhere between Hamden and Hartford. Her precise words were: "My mom's mad at me 'cuz I was supposed to be on my way to Rosewood already but Aria seemed miserable on the phone. She said she doesn't wanna be left alone with Ezra's family and his annoying writer friends… who she described as 'overly pretentious' and… you know how it is. When one of us needs the others, we all come running."

Toby hadn't understood his role until Emily sighed and added, "I'm gonna ask you for a favor now and you have every right to say no but we're friends and it's Christmas and I kinda need a… plus one? I just know that evening's gonna be really awkward and I can't do it on my own."

Predictably, he was reminded of his conversation with Spencer from two months ago where she had implied underlying hostilities between friends that Toby was always convinced would _stay_ friends for decades to come; where she had hinted towards big fat elephants in the shape of Hanna and Caleb standing in every word, breath and room the four of them dared to share. He initially didn't want to go at all. Saying no to Emily isn't something that comes easy to him but he had planned on making an exception this time. For one, he isn't friends with Ezra _or_ Aria. It's not his really place to come to their Christmas party uninvited, is it? And secondly, while Christmas isn't exactly _his_ favorite holiday for most people, it's special – a day to celebrate with friends and family and Toby is neither friends nor is he family although he has the feeling that Emily would (quite loudly) disagree with him on the last part.

So he knows _how_ he ended up here; Aria's misery had triggered Emily's misery and Emily's misery in turn had triggered Toby's urge to help. What he doesn't know is _why_ he ended up agreeing. He doesn't even remember how she had managed to convince him – she is kind of like Spencer in that regard, at least sometimes; delightfully sneaky and really good at putting on her pleading eyes – but point is, he is here now, attending Aria's Christmas party and yeah, Emily's worries were absolutely and one hundred percent justified.

It's twenty minutes in and Aria and her mom already look as though they are furiously plotting Mrs. Fitzgerald's murder together, at least judging by the identical expression of disgust on their faces. Mr. Montgomery has excused himself a while ago to call Aria's brother who is, from what Toby understands, stuck at some airport due to a storm going on though Toby also suspects that the phone call is long over and he is just trying to buy himself more time to avoid Ezra's family. On the armchair to Toby's right, one of Ezra's writer friends – his name is either Nathan or Ethan, Toby can't remember and is too embarrassed to ask _again_ – is tapping his foot to _Little Drummer Boy_ but his timing and rhythm are all wrong and it's sort of driving Toby crazy. Directly to his left, Em is holding Oscar in her arms and pretending to bite his cheeks all while going, " _I'm gonna eat your chubby cheeks, yes I am, I'm gonna eat you up_ " over and over in a voice he has never heard her use before. Ezra's younger brother had left with a literal bang two minutes after Emily and Toby's arrival – telling his mother to _fuck off_ and slamming the backdoor shut behind him – and the older Fitz is now aimlessly wandering about with a cheese platter, trying to entertain the few guests that are already here and occasionally peeking out of the windows in a fruitless attempt to locate his sibling. In short: it really is awkward as hell. On the plus side, though, this makes him appreciate Christmases at home just a tiny bit more.

Dean Martin is about to finish singing _Let It Snow_ on the stereo when the doorbell rings a couple of minutes later. Aria uses that opportunity to escape her mother-in-law and gracefully abandons her by the grand piano without a word. The older woman, who had been in the middle of yet another tedious and endless rant about Aria's dress, glares after her, obviously displeased. Toby feels awful for Aria. Tammy at least has the decency to ignore Toby's existence whenever he is nearby instead of hitting him with words. Aria rushes to the front door that Toby can't see from his spot on the sofa. "Is that Wes? Is he back?"

"Uh, no. It's just Spencer," Toby hears Ezra tell her and at that, Emily and Toby simultaneously turn their heads to catch a glimpse of the door.

"Huh. She knows we're here, right?" Emily asks in a low half-mumble, gently offering Oscar his giraffe pacifier plushie when he begins fussing against her shoulder.

"Wow. _Just Spencer_ can really feel the Christmas spirit," Spencer remarks in an especially wry tone that unwillingly forces a smile out of Toby. "No – don't put that away. I'm gonna need it."

"Yeah. She does. I texted her and asked if she was okay with me coming here with you," Toby answers Emily quietly, turning his head back to his friend and away from the entrance. "And she said she didn't mind. How long are you guys planning on keeping this up anyway?"

Emily raises her eyebrows at him. "Keeping _what_ up?"

Behind them, Aria hums in disapproval. "What she means is that she's gonna need her coat later when she's smoking on our back porch again," she explains. "By the way, I bought an ashtray last weekend. Now you can finally stop using our _coffee mugs_ to put out your cigarettes."

"Well, honestly, it was either _that_ or putting them out in your flowers," Spencer retorts with an audible shrug, her heels click-clacking on the floor as she moves further into the house. "I just assumed that turning your ' _ask me about my book_ ' mug into a temporary ashtray was sort of the better option, considering you don't want people to ask you about your book anyway."

"Mhm. And you know what's an even better option?" Aria asks. "Not smoking at all."

"She's right," Ezra agrees. "These things can kill you, you know."

"Damn, you've figured out my evil plan," Spencer replies. Then, after a beat or two of painfully awkward silence, she adds, "It was a joke, you guys. You can laugh now."

"I was under the impression that jokes are funny," Aria says before there's more click-clacking from the entryway and their voices quiet down as they disappear in the kitchen.

Emily clears her throat and repeats, while carefully stroking Oscar's hair, "Keeping _what_ up, Tobes?"

Toby blinks. "Uh, not talking to each other?" he answers. "Ignoring each other?"

She rolls her eyes, unimpressed, rest her cheek against the top of Oscar's head. "I don't know where you got that from but we're not ignoring each other," she says. "It's just… complicated."

"Uncomplicate it then," Toby suggests, lowering his voice some more when he notices Nathan-or-Ethan leaning in interestedly from the side. "Or what exactly was your plan for tonight?"

"Yeah, it's not as simple as it sounds," Emily says and shakes her head, almost but not quite an irritated hiss. Yet. It appears as if she had been waiting for someone to finally bring this up to her though because the sour expression on her usually calm and collected features becomes increasingly angrier by the second. "I _tried_ reaching out after we left Rosewood, okay? I texted her. I called her. I tried Facebook, Skype, Instagram, Snapchat. And she… she never answered. But, of course, we're talking about Spencer here and she probably made it look like I'm the one that's wrong because she's physically incapable of taking responsibility for anything she does."

"Okay, I understand being mad but that was really unnecessary-"

She cuts him off with an exasperated sigh. "I probably shouldn't be surprised that you _still_ jump to her defense even though you have absolutely no idea what's going on and yet…" They turn their heads when the doorbell rings once more but this time, it's just a bunch of people neither of them recognize so she continues, "I'm not mad. Because I've left that stage _years_ ago and I'm _beyond_ mad now. I'm mad that I was forced into this stupid position in the first place. I feel like… I feel like the kid of two parents going through a divorce and both of them are constantly trying to make me pick a side. I'm sick of it."

Exhaling a tired sigh as well, Toby draws his hand over his stubbly jaw. "Well, Spencer seems to think that you've, uh, picked Hanna's 'side' in this."

"Do you really think I haven't noticed? And here's where it gets funny: Hanna is _convinced_ that I've picked Spencer's 'side' just because I don't agree with how she handled everything back then," Emily states. "Meanwhile Aria's the one picking sides and Aria's also the one picking _fights_ … seriously, she's like one of those dogs that are _way_ too angry for their size… it's nuts. She managed to make Hanna feel so guilty with her constant nagging that she finally drove up here to talk to Spencer last week."

"And? How did that work out?"

"No idea. I'm only allowed to have conversations with Hanna when we talk about things that don't involve Spencer." She leans over to grab an iced pumpkin cookie from the decorated plate on the coffee table, splits it in two and hands Toby the other half. "But since Aria invited Hanna _and_ Caleb, and Hanna told me this morning that they're coming, I'm guessing they didn't strangle each other after all."

Toby glances at her and raises his eyebrow. On his look, Emily blushes and begins wiping the cookie crumbs off Oscar's head as softly as she can and says, "I didn't mean to do that."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then why are you staring me?"

"Well, if Spencer and Hanna can make up-"

"No," Emily interrupts him sharply. "I've been in the middle of this 'fight' for two years. I had to listen to Hanna's non-stop ranting for two _freaking_ years, okay, where she somehow found six thousand different words for cheating without actually having to say cheating. And I had to deal with total rejection after each birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's text to Spencer. I don't care if they made up. They should. Because, honestly, they deserve each other."

"Has anyone ever told you that you can be _really_ stubborn?"

Adjusting Oscar in her grasp, she shoots Toby a hard look. "I know all of this is way different than what Spence-"

Toby shrugs. "She didn't tell me much."

"Well, whatever it is that she told you, it probably sounded totally different than what I'm telling you right now and that's because there's always more than one side to a story. And in this whole bull…" She trails off, glancing down at baby Oscar, then says, "and in this whole _situation_ that Hanna and Spencer forced me and Aria into, there's, like, three hundred different versions and unlike Aria, I don't feel comfortable pretending that Spencer's version is the only right one."

"Seriously, Em?"

"There he goes again. I'm not excusing what Hanna did, okay? It was horrible. All I'm saying is that they both could've thought about the consequences of their actions. Before Spencer got with Caleb – ugh, sorry." She puts her warm hand on his arm and he swallows his scowl, shrugs his shoulders in an attempt to fake nonchalance and apparently succeeds; Emily withdraws her hand a beat later. "She really should've thought about what it would do to all of us and Hanna should've… god, she should've used her brains for once in her life. But what's done is done and we'll never get back to how things used to be, even if Hanna and Spencer miraculously decide to make up and be friends again."

"So why come here?" Toby wonders, scratching at his chin. "If you're not planning on talking things out and making up? Why even accept Aria's invitation if you're friendly but not friends?"

She immediately snorts as though he just told an inside joke that he wasn't let it on and smiles a little sad smile that makes his heart contract to the point of pain. "Yeah, nostalgia is funny. It always makes the past look better than it really was, I guess," she answers quietly and for the first time in years, he can vividly see the traces of her father's death, of Maya, of Charlotte and of every single aching memory on her tired, tired face. "Besides, I literally owe my life to these girls. Least I can do is play along when Hanna and Aria think we're all gonna get a happy ending eventually. Once Christmas is over, I'll be back in New York anyway and then Hanna's gonna call me on FaceTime every other week to talk about some new HBO show she's watching, and Aria's gonna text me pictures of Oscar, and Spencer's gonna keep ignoring me and everything will be back to our new normal. Maybe we'll have lunch sometime where Aria gets snappy for no reason or maybe Hanna will send me screenshots of Spencer's Instagram feed at three in the morning because she's convinced that Spencer's throwing shade at her. Or maybe Spencer will accidentally look at my Snapchat story. I don't know. Point is, I can do this whole… thing for one evening. I'm not interested in doing this for the rest of our lives. It's over. It's done."

He sighs and reaches for her free hand, the one that isn't steadying Oscar against her chest, and takes it into his, squeezes it firmly. "I'm really, _really_ sorry, Em," he says and he is – he wishes there was a way to fix everything that is seemingly irreparable now. He also wishes he knew how Caleb can peacefully sleep at night without an ounce of guilt keeping him up. "For what happened to you. What you guys had was… amazing. I really thought you'd be friends forever."

"So did I. But maybe we're better off without each other anyway. Maybe it's the only healthy way of finally letting go of Rosewood for good," she replies and then rolls her eyes at herself right after. She gives a slight laugh and adds, "Sorry. That was totally my therapist talking."

He smiles. "What happened to your 'I'm never going back to therapy' talk three weeks ago?"

"What happened to that is that I thought about it some more after we hung up and I realized that you were right after all," she says, ramming her elbow into his ribs playfully when he responds with a smug grin. "But do you now understand where I'm coming from and why I didn't wanna do this by myself? It's not just Spencer that's gonna make tonight awkward as hell. It's Aria and it's Hanna and Caleb and it's-" She frowns at something or someone behind his shoulder and asks, sounding completely puzzled too, "Ali?"

Furrowing his brow, Toby turns his head as well and sure enough, there is Alison DiLaurentis. Out of everyone Toby has run into so far, she has definitely changed the most since the last time he saw her. Her hair is shorter, a darker shade of blonde, and she looks virtually uncomfortable as she makes conversation with Aria. He turns his head back to Emily.

Emily, just as he had predicted or perhaps _expected_ , then announces, "I-I'll be right back in a second, okay? I'm just gonna say hello."

He hums, tilts his head. "What was that what you said about nostalgia five minutes ago?"

She unceremoniously dumps Oscar into his lap. "Bricks and glass houses, Toby."

With that – and a humorless smirk that he can't help but reciprocate because, sadly, she does have a point there – Emily vanishes to _say hello_ and he is left with Oscar and also left wondering why in the world none of the grandparents are rushing over to take the baby from Toby, a mere stranger to the little boy. He adjusts him in his hold and regards Oscar softly who is staring up at him, hazel eye widened in surprise, bottom lip close to trembling in fear.

"Shh," Toby coos, stroking his cheeks to distract him. They really _are_ incredibly chubby and terribly adorable from up close. Emily's inexplicable urge to bite them over and over suddenly doesn't seem as silly anymore. "No crying, okay? I know we don't know each other yet because we haven't been formally introduced but…" He slowly shakes the little boy's fist. "Hi. I'm Toby. It's nice to meet you, Oscar. You have _very_ beautiful-"

"Okay, that's cute."

Feeling an embarrassing blush crawl up his neck, Toby lifts his head just as Spencer joins him on the sofa with a big grin, plopping down on Emily's previous seat. "Hi. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," he responds and smiles. The stench of alcohol and nicotine coming off her is overwhelming. He glances at Aria by the fireplace whose cheeks are suspiciously rosy too and figures they must have spent the past half an hour drinking in the kitchen. He decides not to question it. "So, uh… how much did you hear?"

"Mm, let's see," she replies, resting her elbow on the back of the sofa behind them and leaning her head against her hand. It's – it's a bold, kind of aggressive pose and if he didn't know any better, it would nearly seem _purposely_ flirty. He averts his eyes. _It's probably nothing more than the alcohol_ , he explains away. Holiday season putting people in the mood. It doesn't have to mean anything if they don't want to. Right? Right. "Just the part where you formally introduced yourself to a two-month-old who doesn't even understand his own existence, let alone yours."

"Hey. Don't be mean to my new friend. He understands _a lot_ more than you're giving him credit for. He's a smart little boy. Isn't that right, buddy? Aren't you a smart little boy?" Toby asks and as if determined to prove his aunt wrong, Oscar gurgles, waving his arms in excitement, looks away from the brunette and directs his attention back to Toby. That, in turn, causes the beaming smile on Spencer's soft features to grow. "The introduction was kinda necessary. I mean, how would you feel if someone you barely knew suddenly had their arms around you?"

"Well, I'd probably say that my Tinder date was going exactly as planned," Spencer shoots back with ease and then her hand immediately comes up to cover her eyes in shame. "Wow. What a wildly inappropriate thing to tell your ex-boyfriend. Sorry. I'm a little… Aria forced me to do shots with her in the kitchen. She said it was either shots or helping her bury Mrs. Fitzgerald's body in her vegetable patch and I've kinda had enough of burying bodies."

Toby forces himself to a smirk. "Tequila?"

"Schnapps."

"Ah, so you've finally gotten over your schnapps trauma."

She waves her hand dismissively. "I wouldn't call it trauma. It wasn't _that_ bad."

"Uh, are we both remembering the same night?" Fixing Oscar's hair absentmindedly, he laughs at her look of mock irritation. "'cuz, you know, _I_ remember you throwing up in my truck. And I also remember you not even letting me _say_ schnapps after that 'cuz just thinking about it made you gag."

She rolls her eyes at him. "What kinda cop gets drunk with a college freshman anyway?"

"That college freshman was very persuasive," Toby protests. "And I wasn't _that_ drunk."

"That's funny 'cuz, you know, _I_ remember you being pretty fucking drunk, Officer," Spencer mimics. She stares over his shoulder, at something he can't see, and laughs to herself. "I can't believe my roommate actually threw us out that night. And I can't believe we actually _listened_."

"To be fair to Alyssa-"

" _Amber_."

"It was Alyssa," he corrects her. Shaking his head when she opens her mouth to insist that he is wrong, he adds, "You barely talked to her before she dropped out. How would you even know?"

She raises her eyebrows. "And why exactly were _you_ talking to her?"

"She was your roommate and I was around a lot? It seemed like the polite thing to do," Toby retorts. "And, like I said, to be fair to _Alyssa_ , we were kinda loud that night and she was trying to catch up on her reading. No wonder she told us to leave. I would've done the same thing."

"Oh, yeah, wait. I remember now," Spencer exclaims and snickers. He smiles. "We were playing a card game, right? _Rummy_ or _Go Fish_ or something? And we got _kinda_ aggressive about it."

"Yeah, something like that. Might've been _Uno_ but honestly, I don't remember for sure."

"That was a really fun night," she says as one swift, manicured hand runs through her bangs in an effort to straighten the wavy ends. She scrunches up her nose. "Well… except for the part where I puked in the bed of the truck and you ended up having to take care of me."

He chuckles, somewhat nervously, and quickly changes the topic because while he forgot what kind of game they were playing that night, he definitely _does_ remember what they had been in the middle of doing before she got sick and that is – as she had so accurately put earlier – wildly inappropriate to bring up or even recall, right? Right. "So, uh, you going home for Christmas?"

Spencer too seems grateful at the cancelled trip down memory lane and says, "Yeah. I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. I was actually supposed to be home, like… yesterday already. My mom wanted me to help with _her_ Christmas party and knowing her, she's definitely pissed at me now because I left her alone with Melissa but Aria called and said she needed me so… I came here."

"So you came here," he echoes, nodding and thinking back to the eerily similar talk with Emily.

"Yeah and so did you," she responds. "Sorry about your date cheating on you, by the way."

He half-grins, follows her gaze to Emily and Alison across the room who appear to be deep in conversation about something terribly important. Looking at Spencer once more, then, he is (more than) a little taken aback by how close she seems to have gotten but before he can dwell on that for too long, figure out the meaning to it and figure out if there even _is_ a meaning to it, she strokes over Oscar's back. Toby rolls his eyes at himself. _Great job overinterpreting every little thing she does_.

"You wanna hold him?"

"Uh, thanks but… no thanks," she retorts right away. "I'm gonna wait a few more months until he's a little older and I'm not deadly afraid of accidentally murdering him anymore."

Toby cackles. "What?"

"Newborns are kinda fragile and let's not kid ourselves here – pun absolutely intended – we both know that I'm not mom material," she reasons. "Don't tell Aria I said that but I've only held him, like, maybe once or twice in two months. She thinks I'm constantly doing it."

Toby doesn't mean to because it's clearly bothering her on some level but he is _roaring_ with laughter now. Nathan-or-Ethan throws them an annoyed look as Spencer gapes at Toby and then joins in just as loudly. "Stop laughing at me. I've managed to drop their cat, okay? I don't wanna drop their baby too."

"There's a cat?"

" _Oh my god_."

"What?"

" _You_ ," she says, shaking her head at him. Her tone is reproaching and yet there is a smile hiding in the corners of her mouth that makes him feel… that just makes him _feel_. "Only _you_ would get along perfectly with a baby you've just met and immediately start drooling at the thought of petting a cat. Forget it, Toby. I haven't seen him all night. He's hiding... and evil."

"He's evil," Toby repeats, eyebrows raised. "What's his name?"

"His name is Pudding."

"Ah, thought so. You're wrong. Cats named _Pudding_ can't be evil even if they wanted to," he replies matter-of-factly. Then he looks at her as their laughs wither away, her eyes more serious now, almost sober, and he adds, "And that thing you said… about not being 'mom material'?"

She sighs. "Can we please drop it and pretend I never said that?"

"Uh, no, we can't. I don't want you to feel that way about yourself," he says quietly. "Look, I don't know if you even _want_ children and I have no idea if you'll ever _have_ children but what I do know is that, if you do, those kids will be the happiest kids on earth and all because they'll have a mom like you."

She looks at him, looks at Oscar, looks back at him again, like she can't quite decide on what she is supposed to say next, on what she is supposed to _do_. Until she settles, blinks away the wave of emotions in her eyes that he deliberately ignores for now because he doesn't know if he is even allowed to see, and mumbles, "Well… only if you, the baby whisperer, are around when they're newborns 'cuz somebody's gotta hold them."

He breaks off their eye contact before he can get lost in her browns and throw every promise of innocent friendship overboard. "You won't need me for that when their dad is around. I'm just gonna be the babysitter-at-parties-after-Emily-mysteriously-disappears guy."

She removes her elbow from the back of the sofa, smoothly transitions from bold flirty pose to practically uncomfortable as she crosses her arms. "Yeah," she sighs and then proceeds to cross her long legs too, shooting a smile at the side of Toby's face. He pretends to be too busy playing with Oscar's hair to notice. "You know what's funny? I don't _wanna_ believe you but… I always, uh, I always admired that about you. A lot. It's almost like you're not capable of lying. Even when you say something ridiculous, something I'm convinced has to be total bullshit, like what you said just now, I always end up believing you anyway. Honestly, you could tell me the sky was green and I'd eat it up because _you_ said it."

"Mmm… funny you'd mention that. The sky actually _is_ green," he deadpans.

"And I one-hundred percent believe you. See? That's trust."

They laugh a little, timid and unsure – a whole lot of unresolved issues from the past they refuse to name, a whole lot of tension from the present they refuse to see and a whole of uncertainty regarding their future they refuse to address in each take of breath, in each stolen look – but the moment is spoiled, rotten, thrown in the trash when the crowd by the mudroom breaks into an overly excited chatter. He has no idea why Spencer's face falls at once, her gaze hardening in a way he is all too familiar with but hasn't seen in years. The rushed exchange of congratulations has to be related to Oscar lying against his chest, right? Some more guests must have arrived who haven't had the chance to talk to the Ezra and Aria yet.

And then – and then he turns to check over his shoulder because Spencer's somber expression doesn't fade and The Ronette's _Sleigh Ride_ is playing on the stereo now as Alison holds Hanna's left hand in hers, inspecting the huge rock on her engagement ring with interest, and right behind them, Emily draws Caleb into a hug, the biggest of grins plastered all over her face, and Aria at least looks half-conflicted but her eyes are kind of sparkling with joy, and Hanna is obviously basking in the attention she is receiving, not just from her friends but other random guests too and Aria's parents who come over to congratulate the couple, wish them the best, and…

_Merry fucking Christmas_ , Toby thinks.

"Well, that's my cue to go to the bathroom," Spencer mutters.

And maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't have but it's one of these moments where his instincts work faster than his brains, where his need to wipe that frown off her face is louder than their mutual desire to keep things as uncomplicated as possible, because suddenly he is holding her hands in his and he asks, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm fine. Promise," she answers with a smile that doesn't fool him at all. "It's just – if I stay here, Aria's gonna come over and ask me if I'm okay with that annoying face she does and then _Emily's_ gonna come over and ask if I'm okay so she can run back to Hanna and make her feel better about herself and then _Ali's_ gonna come over and… you know, it'd just be really awkward for everyone involved if I stayed. Mostly really awkward for me though. And I'm trying to avoid Christmas-related drama until I have to spend Christmas with _my_ family."

"So… what now?" he replies. "You're gonna hide all night?"

"I don't hide, Toby," she says. "It's not my thing."

Here's what actually happens though: he doesn't know whether she is indeed taking refuge in the upstairs bathroom or not but what he does know is that she stays gone and far, far away from the party in the living room and the people who seem to have successfully forgotten about her. Although hiding might not be _her thing_ , avoiding topics and past memories she would rather not come face to face with apparently is. He sort of wishes he would have followed her example because sitting here now, almost an hour later at the bottom of the stairs with his idle fingers combing through Pudding's fur, all he wants is to disappear. Emily comes over here and there to talk about nothing in particular, share another cookie with him or complain about Aria's Christmas playlist but her company does nothing to ease his mind, really, and it definitely does nothing to whisk away his fury at Hanna and Caleb. If he has to be honest, he is somewhat angry at Emily too though not to the same extent; her words from before, her long-winded explanation as to why things are the way they are and as to why they have to stay the way they are, look incredibly insincere now. Like mere smoke screen. Like she had picked a side in this unspoken argument _years_ ago and only half-heartedly constructed a good enough reason to justify her choice to herself because she is right beside Hanna, slurping her eggnog and giggling as the blonde sings along to _Jingle Bell Rock_ loudly. All of this reminds him too much of Tammy on that Christmas morning and her whole shtick with his mom's chair and he figures that he still is the same fucking coward he has always been because he stays put instead of confronting the _newly engaged couple_ like he probably should. Actually, he thinks, scratch that. Like he _definitely_ should.

It's almost ridiculous how contagious Spencer's sadness is. Toby shouldn't even care that much about seeing Hanna and Caleb again, shouldn't give a single shit about their engagement and their happiness, should he; it's not his place, it's not his right and it's none of his business. And yet it's the same kind of unhealthy co-dependence they would oftentimes slip into half a million nights ago that is now awakening inside him; the same kind of _foliè a deux_ where he unwillingly feels on behalf of her. He doesn't comprehend why much less _how_ they are still so intertwined and intimately connected to the point where every single atom in his body successfully mimics hers in whatever she does. He doesn't know her anymore. Not like he used to. But there it is anyway, his heart – his poor, poor heart – roaring in recognition, desperately trying to beat along to the rhythm of hers, demanding justice and vengeance and an end to this absolute shit show.

Pudding purrs and bumps his head against the inside of Toby's hand, inevitably forcing the man out of his thoughts. Toby briefly glances down at the stubborn Maine Coon and smiles before he continues petting him and looks back at the living room again. He can easily watch most of the gathering from his comfortable spot at the bottom of the stairs. The _newly engaged couple_ is sat on the sofa (Hanna is holding Oscar like she would hold a puppy and coos, "God, I'd look _so_ adorable as a mom." Caleb then proceeds to choke on his drink which, in turn, only earns him a _really_ furious scowl from his fiancée); Mrs. Fitzgerald has managed to catch a very unsuspecting Emily in her web ("Oh, thank you so much, sweetheart. Eleanor, was it? And you said you were one of my _dear_ daughter-in-law's friends from Rosewood?" she asks in a sugar-sweet voice and Emily says, more patient than she looks, "It's Emily, Mrs. Fitzgerald. We met at the wedding, remember? You thought I was a waitress."); some of Ezra's writer friends are standing in a little circle by the TV while Nathan-or-Ethan reads out a passage from his newest book ("…her rosy nipples were like swollen pink erasers against the sheer fabric of her white nightgown…"); Mrs. Montgomery is occupied with removing the empty salad bowls from the open buffet while Alison decorates the table with several red and green colored napkins and Ezra fills three glasses with sparkling wine ("That _is_ a good choice. I remember reading _Jane Eyre_ with my students and most of them really enjoyed it," Mrs. Montgomery comments. "I don't know about that. Personally, I was just never a big fan of the Brontë sisters. Still putting _Jane Eyre_ on the curriculum seems almost… redundant now, doesn't it, when there's so many other great writers that essentially wrote about the same thing," Ezra chimes in, handing the women their respective glasses. "You mean other great _male_ writers, Ezra? _Jane Eyre_ was one of the first and probably one of the most popular novels that wrote about the position of women in modern society. Male writers just don't get that," Alison remarks and Mrs. Montgomery gives a chuckle) and Mr. Montgomery is on the phone again, furrowing his eyebrows as he bites into a brownie that is meant to look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with tiny pretzels for antlers ("Mike, cut it out. I have a functioning phone. I looked it up. There is no snowstorm in Newark and your supposed flight was never cancelled either. Where are you?").

His fingers still scratching under Pudding's chin, Toby then catches Aria's eyes from across the room when she walks to pick up Oscar who is crying hysterically, most likely overwhelmed by Hanna's selfie marathon she has been forcing him through. Aria begins rocking him and purses her lips somewhat in order to conceal a visibly amused smile. She raises her brows too, subtly tilting her head in Hanna and Caleb's direction who look less happy now and more _utterly and completely frustrated_ with each other. Hanna huffs in annoyance at something he says and gets up to rush to Emily, leaving her fiancé behind. Aria too proceeds to move away from the sofa as she rubs Oscar's back and shoots Toby another meaningful and highly entertained look – _did you see that?_ Toby smirks and shrugs – _too bad, huh_? She returns his smirk gleefully and brings fore and middle fingers to her mouth in some sort of reverse peace sign and Toby frowns until he finally understands what she is trying to say – _smoking_.

Smoking?

Huh.

_What?_ he mouths, confused.

Rolling her eyes in an exaggerated manner and giving up on her pantomime routine of the night, Aria adjusts Oscar in her arms and briskly makes her way towards him. "Seriously, how much did you have to drink?" she asks in an irritated half-whisper.

Toby glances at the half-empty glass to his right. "Uh…"

"Never mind," Aria sighs. "I was talking about Spencer. She's smoking on the back porch."

"Oh?"

Again, Aria raises her eyebrows at him but this time, it's expectant, like she is wondering what the hell he is still doing at the bottom of the stairs even though she gave him clear instructions.

"Oh," he repeats and gets to his feet. Pudding isn't pleased – he comments Toby's attempt to leave him with a disgruntled meow. "Yeah, I'll go see how… I'll just go."

"And I will take _that_ , thank you," Aria retorts, grabbing the half-empty wine glass before Toby can reach for it and finish it like he had intended to. "There's plenty of food. Eat something and make sure Spencer eats too because I'm not dealing with you two being drunk at my party."

"I'm not drunk," Toby protests. And he's not, he's completely so—all right, he's tipsy. A little.

"Yeah, whatever." She kisses the top of Oscar's head. "Go through the kitchen and close the door behind you. It's fucking freezing outside."

He watches her walk upstairs and sneak in a sip or two or three from his wine until he can't see her any longer, puts on his coat and moves back to the living room where he grabs a plate from the buffet. Emily, who is leaning against the closest wall and eating casserole, sends him a soft smile when she spots him; Hanna glances up and does the same although hers looks more like a grimace than anything. Toby merely nods. They continue their conversation uninterrupted as Toby shovels food onto the plate in his hand ("… uh, definitely not. I was already pissed at him when we came here 'cuz we had this, like, majorly stupid fight 'cuz he's too fucking stubborn to ask for directions. Like, ever," Hanna says and downs the contents of her glass in one solid but kind of impressive gulp. "Did you guys drive here from Rochester or a badly written rom-com?" Emily asks dryly) and continue their conversation uninterrupted as he reaches behind Hanna to swiftly grab two glasses and the unguarded bottle of sparkling wine. He has to act fast though – he can _feel_ Ezra's eyes glued to the back of his head as if Aria had told her husband to watch Toby's alcohol intake as closely as he can. Which is an overreaction, Toby thinks. He isn't drunk. Just a little tipsy and he and Spencer could definitely use a glass of wine, right?

Right.

He expertly hides the bottle inside his coat – Emily raises one suspicious eyebrow at both him _and_ the bottle over Hanna's ramblings but doesn't say anything, lucky for him – and literally makes a run for the kitchen, ducking past another little group of writers who are once more too engrossed in reading aloud especially racy passages from their awful books to notice that Toby is essentially fleeing a crime scene with stolen goods.

He finds Spencer exactly where Aria had predicted she would be: cowering on the steps of the back porch, her scarf thrown around her shoulders and staring out into the dark. She doesn't look up or give any indication that she is aware of his presence when he joins her outside and closes the door behind him, muffling the sounds from the party. _Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree_ starts playing for the fourth or fifth time that night as part of the crowd breaks into cheerful laughter at what he presumes has to be Ezra's speech Emily had already warned him about on their way here. Oscar's cries echo across the backyard from an open window upstairs, followed by Aria's attempts at comforting him with a lullaby. Right behind them, in the kitchen, someone is loading plates into the dishwasher. But despite all the noises disrupting the night – the loud music, the frantic crying, the angry fighting from the next-door neighbors and a dog barking in the distance – it's almost breathtakingly serene. It's snowing again or perhaps it never stopped and Aria was right; it's fucking freezing too, the fresh air all but burning Toby's lungs.

He blinks against the cold. "I thought you weren't gonna hide."

"I'm not," Spencer answers. "I just needed some time alone."

"Oh," Toby says and frowns. "Right. I'm sorry. I'll leave-"

"No, that's okay. Stay," she interrupts him gently, lifting her gaze to look at him from under her lashes. "I can be alone with you."

Feeling kind of like an intruder regardless, he returns her soft smile with a hint of hesitance and proceeds to sit down beside her, placing the bottle of wine between them. She wraps her scarf around herself more and doesn't say anything, seemingly contemplative as she keeps staring at the snow. He clears his throat, mostly to regain her attention, and mutters, "Uh… Mom told me to bring you food… she said she wants us to eat something…"

Spencer knits her eyebrows, visibly lost and bemused for a moment, until her eyes fall on the plate of food he is balancing on his knees. She snorts. "Careful," she warns in a teasing voice and takes the fork from his grasp. He briefly wonders – even though he _shouldn't_ – whether she is intentionally making sure that they don't touch. "My sarcasm's starting to rub off on you."

"Yeah… don't tell her I said it like that though," he replies and grimaces when she laughs. "Not gonna lie, I already feel _kinda_ bad about being mean."

"Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. Aria will never know," she promises with an affirming nod. She extends her hand then, going for his… going for his jaw it nearly seems but that would be completely ridiculous, wouldn't it? And he, he instinctively stills in his movements, freezes up like a wild animal, afraid, his heart stuck in his throat as though unsure if it wants to stay or leave, but as quickly as Spencer had lifted her arm, she drops it just as quickly again, back into her lap with an audible thud that slices through the peaceful quiet of the snow-covered backyard.

She adds, tumbling all over her words, "Sorry. Force of habit. I just… you just got a little – I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to be weird."

"Oh. Heh." He reaches into the pocket of his coat to grab one of those red napkins he had stolen from the buffet and wipes around his mouth, pretends not to notice that she scoots away from him. He also pretends not to notice the sudden rush of utter relief overcoming him in a belated reaction to the physical distance she has created. "I shouldn't be allowed near mashed potatoes when I've been drinking."

Wrinkling her nose, she picks at the cranberry and turkey filling of the pie she has cut in half and then wordlessly pushes it over to his side of the plate. "Where were you? Earlier? I didn't see you when I came downstairs. I kinda assumed you just left without saying goodbye."

What she doesn't say: _like you always do_. But he can sense it and it feels like a slap. Perhaps a slap he rightfully deserves after everything that has happened but a slap nevertheless.

"Huh? Oh, no, I went outside to get some fresh air," Toby responds with a casual shrug when he has literally never felt so far from casual before. "We must've missed each other."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess we must have," she agrees quietly. Then she reaches for the wine, a heavy sigh slipping from her mouth as she inspects it, indecision blooming on her features. "They're all cowards."

"Who now?"

"Uh… all of them?" Spencer answers. "Emily was so scared to show up by herself, she actually had to call and ask _you_ to come with her. Like you're her babysitter. And then there's Hanna who's _still_ scared to face me when Aria's around – she came here with her engagement ring and made sure that I'd see it. And Ali… Ali came alone and she's been acting at least _kind of_ normal so I'll give her that. I guess Em and Hanna are the only cowards here."

She takes a huge swig from the wine bottle, passes it back to him, pauses and adds, "And you know what? Fuck Caleb too. Seriously _fuck_ him for coming here and hiding behind Hanna."

Humming, Toby puts the plate on the cold steps next to them and takes a sip as well in order not to reply with, _'Yeah, I'll_ definitely _drink to that'_ or _'I can punch that smirk off his face if you want me to'_ or something equally irrational, alcohol-motivated and inconsiderate like that.

"She held me hostage in my apartment last week. Hanna, I mean."

"So I've heard."

"Of course you have."

He glances at her, ignoring the biting tone and the pursed lips too. "How did that end?"

She rolls her eyes, blowing an unimpressed raspberry. "What do you think?" she questions and wraps her arms around her legs. "She told me that Caleb proposed and claimed she _just_ didn't feel _comfortable_ saying yes because she feels _so_ bad about what happened between us and since I have the tendency to let people I care about turn me into a total fucking doormat…"

He takes another sip from the bottle when she falls silent.

She sighs, resting her cheek against her knees, watching him watch her. "You know those people who only apologize 'cuz your hurt feelings make them feel bad, not 'cuz they feel bad about hurting you in the first place?"

He thinks of his dad and pulls a face. Slowly, he nods.

"Yeah. That's pretty much the only reason Hanna came over. I had this feeling… I knew from the second she showed up at my door and then we talked and…" She shrugs. "Am I stupid for still believing that her heart's in the right place?"

"It's not stupid, Spencer. It's…" He scratches his chin. "It's just very human."

"Believing in something that I already know to be untrue is human." She hums, appearing to be mulling it over, as she digs out her cigarettes from the depth of her coat pocket. "Haven't heard that one yet. That's a really subtle way of letting me know that I'm fucking stupid."

"No, I promise, you're not," he assures her softly. "Look, you wanna believe that she's still the person she was years ago and you wanna believe _you're_ still the person you once were and it's always easier to give into the illusion than facing reality as it is and admitting that everything's different now, including you. That's normal. She probably feels the same way, you know."

"Hm. You sound like you're speaking from experience," she remarks, cigarette dangling from her lips. "Care to share with the class or haven't we reached _that_ level of friendship yet?"

"It's – it's nothing."

"It's Yvonne, right?" On his eyebrows, she adds, while fiddling with her lighter, "Don't look at me like that. _You_ brought it up, Toby. I wasn't even planning on asking you again."

And maybe it's the sparkling wine and everything else he has gotten his hands on so far, maybe it's Christmas and the intimate, relaxed setting, maybe it's holding onto this story for over an entire year like a secret he isn't supposed to tell but Toby crumbles and so do the walls around him.

"Yeah. It's Yvonne but it's…" He interrupts himself with silence, struggling with his words. In a small but quite meaningful gesture of encouragement or perhaps comfort, she offers him her cigarette and Toby doesn't smoke so naturally, he takes it and inhales a deep drag before handing it back. "It's not the same thing. She deserves to be with someone who loves – who really, _really_ loves her and I… eventually, I realized that someone wasn't me. I already let it go on for far too long when I should've ended it the minute we moved and I started having doubts. But I was… stupid or human or whatever you wanna call it and I didn't and I let her believe that I was still the same person she fell in love with. And then I broke her heart four months before the wedding. _That's_ what happened. That's what you wanted to know."

_Three weeks after you texted me_ , he wants to say but he bites his lower lip and keeps quiet.

"But you loved her," she states.

"I did," he says truthfully. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her lower her head to inspect her shoelaces and he crosses his arms and does the same thing. "I loved her so much. And then one day I just… didn't anymore. Not enough to keep pretending that everything was like it used to be. Not enough to act like I was ready to get married and live a lie for the next… for the rest of my life."

She flicks her cigarette casually, sending the burnt ash fluttering to the ground. "God Toby… why did you even stay with her for so long if you were having doubts?"

"I wanted her to be happy," he responds, sort of confused because he doesn't understand why that isn't obvious to her. "I still cared about her, Spencer. Just because I fell out of love doesn't mean I stopped loving her entirely. And I, I don't know, I was convinced it'd get better. I thought I needed some more time to get used to it. To the island, the house, being back in school, not being a cop anymore…"

"But it didn't get better," she says quietly.

"But it didn't get better," he echoes. "She's… she's amazing. And she deserves more than being with someone like me and only having parts of them."

"And then what?" she asks. "You ran?"

Toby grimaces. "And then I ran," he admits and ignores her eye-roll. "She hates me now – and I don't blame her for that, she's got every right to hate me – but if I'd stayed, I think she would've ended up feeding me to the lobsters. Which I, come to think about it, probably deserve for doing what I did."

"Well, I don't know about that. Maybe you do. Breaking up with someone four months before the wedding is kinda… you know."

"Believe me, I _do_ know."

"What's that _Mourning Bride_ quote again?" she wonders, glancing off to the right. " _Heaven has no rage like a love to hatred turned_...?"

" _Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned_ , yeah."

Spencer lifts her head to look at him then, look into his eyes deeply, her gaze suddenly becoming a dark shade of sadness. "But you absolutely did the right thing, Toby," she tells him in a tiny voice he nearly misses. "I just wish you would've done it sooner. Not just because of Yvonne but because of _you_. Her happiness wasn't more important than yours. You shouldn't have had to stay miserable for so long."

He shrugs. "My happiness wasn't more important than hers either."

"Maybe." Cautious and gauging his reaction, she extends her hand again. This time, her soothing touch caresses over his back. This time, he lets her. "But you really need to learn how to stop living for other people."

"Didn't you _just_ say that you only forgave Hanna to make her happy?"

Her dry non-smile first morphs into a little snort and then her little snort transforms into a not-so-little chuckle. "I already know that I'm a massive hypocrite who doesn't take her own advice, Toby, you don't have to keep reminding me."

"Uh, I never said anything about that. You came to that conclusion on your own. I was just, you know, innocently checking if I got the whole story right."

Making a sound in the back of her throat that is half-amusement, half-annoyance, Spencer leans across his legs and skillfully steals the bottle from beside Toby. "Well, _here's looking at you, kid_ ," she announces, first raising it to him, then raising it to her mouth.

"All right, Bogart," Toby speaks up, trying and _failing_ to stifle his childish laughter as his hands wrap around the bottle – and, inevitably, around _her_ hands too. "We don't want a repeat of your schnapps trauma. Slow down."

She mewls in protest. "You are already drunk and you're still hogging the wine."

"The wine that _I_ stole."

"And now I'm stealing it from _you_ ," she proclaims as she forcefully whips the bottle out of his grasp and hugs it to her chest.

" _Fine_ ," he mutters, giving up for now. "But if you get sick again-"

" _If_ I get sick again, I will make sure to throw up on _your_ shoes, just for that comment, yeah," she finishes, her crooked smile sending his heart into a somersault that he is sure it will never fully recover from. She rests her head against his shoulder then; heavily, as though she is craving a break; confidently, as though she is craving _him_. "God. We're two peas in a pod, aren't we?"

"I guess," he mumbles, feeling dizzy from the alcohol in his blood or in her breath, he can't tell and he doesn't want to. "I mean, we both might have a huge inferiority complex…"

"Yeah. And don't forget the martyr complex." They heave a sigh at the same time. "Or the fact that we both keep running from stuff we shouldn't be running from. Literally and figuratively."

"We probably should work on that."

"Which one?"

"All of them?" He runs his hand through his hair to shake off the snow. "This can't be healthy."

She quiets. Then: "Can we pretend that today doesn't count and start tomorrow instead?"

Drawing his head back, frown creasing his eyebrows, he glances down at her and isn't surprised to find her staring up at him, wide-eyed and alert. "Where do you wanna go?"

Spencer sits up, subsequently pushing him back into ice-cold chilliness, back into freezing in the snow or in the mere absence of her, he can't tell and he doesn't want to. "Anywhere."

"Uh," he begins and laughs when she chugs the rest of the wine. "I really don't think we should be driving right now."

"Fair enough," she says, nods, laughs along with him. "There's a Pizza Hut down the street and a Dunkin' Donuts but that's probably closed already. It's… maybe ten minutes from here?"

"You really wanna go to Pizza Hut when Aria made all this delicious food?"

"Yeah, no, she literally made nothing," Spencer replies dryly. "It was just her mom and Ezra."

Toby quirks an eyebrow at her. "And that makes it acceptable?"

"A little?" Raising from the steps, she reaches for his hand to help him stand up. "Unless the reason you don't wanna come with me is 'cuz you don't wanna ditch your date."

"Honestly, I think my 'date' ditched _me_ ," he deadpans, managing to get up on his own but still grabbing her hand, to steady himself or to have an excuse to feel her touch again, he can't tell and he doesn't want to. "Either for Alison or Hanna, haven't figured out that part yet."

"We have so much in common." She hums in agreement against his nervous – _drunk_ – chuckle, opens the backdoor and peeks inside the kitchen for a few long beats before abruptly closing it again. He all but runs into her and takes a tiny step back when she spins around. She is slurring; he doesn't know how he hasn't noticed it until now but she is definitely slurring. "Okay, here's the plan: you go steal another bottle of wine from the buffet without getting caught and I'll try to find the schnapps from earlier… and maybe a pack of smokes in the mudroom."

"Okay." Toby nods, feeling dread expand in his stomach because he doesn't want to get caught by Aria's parents and endure Mrs. Montgomery's look of disappointment or because he doesn't want to let go of Spencer's hand, he can't tell and he doesn't want to. "Why are we about to run away and get drunk at a Pizza Hut again?"

Spencer twists her lips to the side. "That's a really good question that I… don't exactly have an answer to right now," she says, mimicking his nod, sounding almost sober. "I'll try to come up with something while we're doing this Bonnie and Clyde number."

"Bonnie and Clyde," he repeats, snorting, giggling, _snickering_ , but she is paying him no mind as she opens the door, firmly drags him back into the house with her and it's – it's stupid, their sneaking about the house like teenagers they were almost never allowed to be, her rummaging through the kitchen with a certain expertise, him carefully inspecting the buffet from afar with what he knows is a more than guilty-looking expression, because nobody… is even wondering about them, it appears, because they all seem to be involved in their own drama. He spots Aria beside Ezra, one arm slung around his waist, standing in a circle with his author friends and she is staring off into the distance, like she would rather be somewhere else; he sees Emily then as she politely separates herself from a very heated discussion between Alison, Caleb and Hanna by crouching down on the floor to pet Pudding's head affectionately; his wandering eyes find Mrs. Fitzgerald and her younger son in the corner where they are engaging in a glaring contest and Toby thinks, if looks could kill, they would both be dead by now; Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery are sitting on the sofa and the latter is burying her face in her hands and he wonders if it has anything to do with Mike and – Spencer's hand on his arm promptly cuts off his thought process and he winces in surprise.

"You ready?"

No, he is not and yes, she knows; she shoots him a look – that sounds wrong, he thinks – she shoots him _the_ look, the one that some primal part of him recognizes, the one that he used to love or maybe still does, he can't tell and he doesn't want to, but it gives him the final push that he had needed, a sudden rush of courage and bravery – like on that morning he had kissed her for the very first time, he thinks, and _god_ , maybe he wishes he could kiss her again and maybe it's just the stupid alcohol talking for him, he can't tell and he really, really wants to and…

… and he makes his way over to the open buffet, all pretenses of secrecy forgotten, takes the bottle of sparkling wine, takes her hand into his too and he _runs_ , and Aria's Christmas playlist is still playing and people are chatting – some excitedly, others furiously – but he doesn't hear anything because all he hears, all he can hear, is her laughter as they run, run again, run _together_.

(To a _fucking_ Pizza Hut of all places but it's the – it's the thought that counts, right?

Right.)


	3. Chapter 3

III.  
Let me tell you all my secrets  
And I'll whisper 'til the day's done

Everything Spencer has managed to gather about Dr. Tova Mizrahi-Pierce through an extensive Google search some days prior: she lives in Auburn with her partner of over twenty years and their two sons, graduated from Harvard in 1998 and has since then primarily focused on treating mood, neurodevelopmental and anxiety disorders, PTSD as well as offering sobriety, addiction and compulsion coaching through several types of psychotherapy. She is published, has taught courses on Abnormal Psychology and Autism at Emerson before and, according to her public Facebook profile, enjoys singing, spending time with her family, volunteering, horse riding and movie nights with her friends.

Things Dr. Mizrahi might have found out about Spencer through a Google research: naturally, her Facebook is the first result. Her profile picture shows her back as she gazes contemplatively at Chicago from the glass balcony in the Sears Tower. She doesn't recall who had taken it for her; it must have been one of those especially slimy guys she met off OkCupid during her first week in Illinois. _What was his name again? Ryan…Robert…_ something boring and insignificant like that. He had called himself a 'skilled artist', that part she does remember well; he had said that he was a 'misunderstood photographer' with the 'old soul of a philosopher' but the irony in that was – and maybe that's her fault for always attracting the worst type of men – that he didn't know how to work his Leica without taking a hard glimpse into his Note App every other minute. Another thing she remembers is that it was taken shortly after she had said goodbye to Rosewood, packed her stuff and left, and afterwards, she never bothered with putting up a new one. It's just Facebook, right?

Her Instagram profile, though now set on private, is what pops up after. Her bio has remained unchanged since freshman year of college, some inspirational Anais Nin quote – _the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom_ – that, now that she thinks about it, sort of makes her sound like an annoying showoff… which, truth be told, she knows she is, but that's certainly not the impression she had wanted to make on her therapist.

Then, her LinkedIn page, listing her various work experiences (cleverly leaving out her stint in waitressing), her education and the languages she can speak and _yes_ , fluency acquired through the Duolingo app _does_ count as speaking a language, thank you very much. Pieces of her exist in the _Team_ tab on her employer's website. _Spencer Hastings. MPP/MBA_ , it announces, next to a black and white photograph of her where she is smiling wide, but her eyes don't quite agree, _Communication Manager_. A bunch of old articles related to her mom, Spencer's previous job in Chicago, her internships and graduation make up most if not all of the other results on the following pages. But buried deep on pages five, six and seven, hide the ugly secrets that Spencer had tried to get rid of by making as much of her life public and accessible.

Because here lie parts of her Rosewood life, forever immortalized in awful news headings.

_Shocking new revelations in alleged 'kidnapping' of Rosewood teenager (18)._

_Murder conviction for local teen (18) who killed girl, made it look like abduction._

_Four teenage girls, charged as accessories to first-degree murder, go missing. Victim's mother left speechless: 'I don't understand how the police could let this happen.'_

_Missing girls finally rescued from underground bunker. Small town of Rosewood in shock: 'Are our kids still safe?'_

_Search for kidnapper continues as Rosewood girls are brought home to their families and loved ones, FBI says._

' _The Dollhouse of Horrors': exclusive pictures from the infamous underground bunker where six Pennsylvanian girls were held prisoners. Extra: UPenn Psychologist Dr. Irwin Hunt talks about Stockholm Syndrome and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder._

And all of _this_ , Spencer adds with an internal sigh, is not even half of it on a good day. Just the lousy tip of the equally lousy iceberg. She is lucky, in a twisted way; having been a minor for most of the _bullshit_ that had transpired in her hometown kept both her name and face out of the public's prying eye. But still, if Dr. Mizrahi is anything like Spencer – they _seem_ similar, don't they? Relentless overachievers in a relationship with perfectionism that some may or may not call unhealthy – she ought to know why the woman is here. So she has trouble understanding her question.

"I'm sorry – what?"

"What are your goals for therapy, Ms. Hastings," Dr. Mizrahi repeats in a patient voice as she crosses her legs and rests her black notebook against her knee. "What do you hope to achieve?"

Spencer knits her eyebrows together. "I'm sorry," she says again, proceeding to cross her legs as well. "I'm sorry, this is gonna sound terribly conceited but… uh… didn't you look me up?"

The woman tosses her an almost motherly smile, pen between her fingers coming to a stop over the notebook. "I don't google my clients. I'd hate to find out things they aren't willing to share with me."

"I mean… I mean, yeah, sure. You do have a poi—but that's normal, right? Looking up someone online is normal and there isn't anything wrong with it?"

"Do _you_ think it's normal?"

Pursing her lips, Spencer breathes a sigh through her nose. "I know that dodging questions and talking in riddles is something they teach therapists in school but…"

"But?"

"I don't know."

The other woman hums thoughtfully and brushes her fingers through her messy, slightly grayed curls and Spencer has to admit against her will that it does manage to wrap the… whole thing between them in a comfortable blanket of casualness as though they aren't currently sat in her office and attempting to find a foolproof way to rip open itchy scars that Spencer had more or less ignored until now. As though they are merely two friendly strangers who happened to meet here of all places to make some candid small talk about literally anything _but_ Spencer's psyche.

"If you want my honest opinion, I don't think there's anything wrong with looking up people online, no," Dr. Mizrahi eventually speaks and taps her pen against her chin. "I think I'd actually _recommend_ googling doctors and reading reviews and such before going in unprepared. I just thought what happened here was quite interesting – you assumed _I_ might find it abnormal and wanted reassurance that I didn't. As if you're under the impression that my opinion holds more worth than yours."

"Well, _you_ went to Harvard. All _I_ know about psychology is what I read on Wikipedia and the articles they reference," Spencer retorts. "So, yeah, if you say – and I'm sorry for being really politically incorrect – if you say I'm crazy, your opinion definitely holds more value than mine."

"I see. And is that of importance to you? That I don't think you're – to borrow your expression now – 'crazy'?" When Spencer gives her a small look, Dr. Mizrahi snickers and lifts her hands as if to defend herself. "I'm not taking notes. This isn't going into your file. I'm only interested in getting to know you better. As a client _and_ as a person."

Spencer mulls it over. "I wish I could say that it _used_ to bother me and that I'm above that now but obviously, I'm still struggling with it," she confesses and rolls her eyes at herself. "It used to be much worse though. I would build my entire sense of self around other people's perception of…" She cuts herself off before she can draw and reveal old memories she isn't ready yet to dive into headfirst, waves her hand dismissively. "Honestly, though, I wouldn't focus on that too much if I were you. I'm sure part of that is my personality. I mean, I had my first major existential crisis at four when my older sister tried to convince me that I'm adopted. Fun stuff."

The corners of Dr. Mizrahi's mouth turn upwards into a smile at the dry expression on Spencer's features. "And this fascination with 'being normal', when did that begin? After or before you were institutionalized?" Spencer raises her brows. The doctor adds, "I didn't google you, but I _did_ read the forms you filled out and the files Dr. Sullivan was kind enough to send me."

"Before, I think. Before Ferndell, before Radley, before the drugs. _Way_ before," Spencer says, lowering her gaze when the doctor does. Panicked, she then forces herself to stop bouncing her leg and curses internally. She can't read or make out what the other woman is scribbling into her notebook from here, of course, but she can picture it before her inner eye; something about _nervous habits_ and _fidgeting_ and _anxiety_. She clears her throat in a not-so-sneaky attempt to get the woman's attention back on her and away from her stupid notebook and babbles, "Like I said, it's not a big deal. I doubt it's connected to anything. It's just who I am. As a person. I tend to have a rather unstable sense of self, but I also think it's gotten better these past years."

"But?" Dr. Mizrahi questions as Spencer trails off.

_But occasionally, I still get the urge to drink myself stupid when I feel like the world's moving too fast for me to follow._

_But occasionally, I still think I deserve to be used when I feel like I've lost myself because maybe I'll find Spencer in dirty bathroom stalls or rug burns on my back._

_But occasionally, I still have a tough time separating the naïve girl from the Google results on page five, six and seven from the confident woman on the first four pages_.

"I don't know," Spencer lies, toying with her necklace, lost in thought. "I haven't really engaged in any of my, what do you call it again, self-destructive behaviors? I haven't done that in along time but…" She sighs. "But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about it and I guess I'm just… I'm just kinda scared? That I'll be back to square one if some major event occurs?"

Dr. Mizrahi nods, writing in her notebook. "You're self-aware. That's good."

"Only when I'm in a good place. Not so much when I'm in a bad place, trust me," Spencer says and shoots her a self-deprecating smirk. "I know, addicts, right? Give us a trigger and we'll be back to our bullshit in a matter of seconds."

"Well, that's the very definition of trigger, Ms. Hastings."

"I guess." Exhaling another sigh, Spencer drops her hand from her necklace and into her lap where she begins smoothing down her skirt. "You can write that down as my goals for therapy."

Dr. Mizrahi hums. "Learning to cope with your triggers?"

"Uh, actually, I was thinking something along the lines of… learning to cope with _myself_?" she responds. "I'm aware that this is _a lot_ to drop on you, considering we have roughly ten minutes left but I'm a basket case. I don't _want_ you to realize that I'm a basket case but that's exactly what I am. And I'm sure, eventually, we'll conclude that it wasn't the… that it wasn't my teen years that turned me into this mess but… but probably my dad forgetting me at the grocery store that one time. I don't know. Point is, most days, I don't know who I am without everyone and everything that has happened to me. But I wanna learn who that woman is and I really, _really_ wanna learn to love her so that I can stop ruining her life whenever I feel like it."

" _Her_ life?"

Spencer purses her lips. "If you're trying to imply that I have multiple personalities-"

"…which is an outdated term that we don't use anymore. DID is a complicated disorder and no, I definitely wasn't trying to imply anything of that sort," Dr. Mizrahi interrupts her. "Why would you refer to yourself in third person?"

"It was a metaphor."

"For what?"

"For how disconnected I feel from myself sometimes? For how hard it is for me to accept that my past is such an integral part of my personality now that I struggle with telling apart my real thoughts and feelings from my intrusive thoughts?" She shrugs, frustrated. "I don't know. Why am I expected to do your job for you?"

Dr. Mizrahi chuckles. "Ms. Hastings," she begins softly despite Spencer's snappy tone. "You've been through this in therapy before. I can't do 'my job' if you're not willing to do yours."

"Which is…?"

Dr. Mizrahi puts her notebook on the small table between them and explains, "Putting that self-awareness and introspection of yours to good use."

Several hours later, Spencer leans against the countertop in Toby's kitchen. It's her first time at his place, a newly renovated studio in one of the quieter and greener neighborhoods away from Boston's core. As predicted, his little townhome is stunning and _so_ very him though also smaller than she had pictured it. Sure, studio can only mean so many things and he _had_ kind of warned her anyway – "Yeah, it's more of a big closet, really" – and she of course is aware that he is in school still, only working part-time, so money, she figures, must be tight. But having his bed in her peripheral vision no matter which way she twists, turns and goes is rather distracting to say the least and not helping with keeping this casual dinner as uncomplicated and… well, _casual_ as possible.

At her thoughts, she feels her eyes widen.

Not that she is thinking about _that_ , of course, and even if she was – which she isn't – it wouldn't be her fault anyway. Because being in the same room as someone you have seen naked before and having a comfortable-looking bed roughly ten feet away from you _might_ trigger some old memories, right? And bad habits. Really, _really_ bad habits.

She needs a fucking drink. Possibly two. To hell with Dr. Mizrahi and self-awareness.

"I had a look through the forms she wants me to fill out by next week," she rambles on, mostly to drown out her inner voice as Toby hums and bends to preheat the oven. Once again, her gaze inevitably lands on the bed in the opposite corner of the room and she grimaces, moves a little to the left, hoping that his frame will obscure the view. "They use those for a pre-diagnosis, you know, so that the doctor can adjust therapy sessions accordingly? Anyway, I looked through them and I don't know what I was expecting but most of the questions are invasive as hell."

"Isn't that the whole point of therapy though?" Toby wonders and begins spraying the baking dish with cooking spray. "Being 'invasive as hell'?"

She tosses the back of his head a pointed look that he seems to notice since his reply consists of a little chuckle. "I guess," she answers, equal parts mumble and defeat. "But I still don't feel comfortable with telling a stranger about my _libido_ in the past six months or, or telling her that I was the 'victim' of a 'traumatic event' or… I can't remember the other annoying question right now."

"So you're not gonna fill out the questionnaire?"

"No. No, I will," she says, watching him spread tablespoons of pesto sauce onto the flattened chicken breasts. "All I'm saying that it's invasive and I don't see how most of these questions are in any way relevant or related to my mental health."

Rolling up one chicken breast tightly, Toby turns his head in Spencer's direction to raise one eyebrow at her in puzzlement. "You… you don't see how being the victim of a traumatic event could be connected to mental health? Really? Spencer, you work in health care."

"Okay, you realize you're supposed to be on _my_ side, right?" She walks closer to him and hands him the toothpick before he can reach for it. "I know I'm being difficult and defensive for no reason but complaining is _literally_ my thing and I'd appreciate your support."

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him smile to himself as though amused – and yes, the bed is in the background and she can easily see _that_ from here too – while he proceeds to secure one chicken breast with the toothpick and then swiftly moves onto the next. She frowns, noting how effortlessly they have once more slipped into working as a team; he holds the second rolled up chicken breast in place so that she can poke through it with another toothpick, probably a bit more aggressive than she had meant to. _What an odd pair we make_ , she muses, stuck somewhere between quiet longing, burning desire and perhaps some sadness too; for what could have been under different circumstances, under different and much, much wiser choices. She heaves a sigh that is barely audible, barely noticeable even, and yet he picks up on it and mistakes it for something that it is not.

"I _am_ on 'your' side… whatever that means," he assures her and pulls up his shoulder to rub it against the side of his face. That causes her to momentarily wonder whether she should scratch it for him. With the bed in plain sight though, reminding her of her own itchy feelings, she has no choice but to discard the idea – an awkward flush threatening to crawl up her neck, to drown her cheeks in an embarrassing red – and focus on preparing the food. "I just think you should give it a try first. Even if it forces you out of your comfort zone."

"Well, I'm 'giving it a try'. I already went twice. I have an appointment for next week. This is me giving it a try," she replies, unceremoniously dipping her finger into the small bowl of pesto sauce. She licks it off her thumb and exclaims, leisurely and rather suddenly too, " _Oh my god._ "

Unsurprisingly, Toby catches her anyway even though she had tried her best to be sneaky about it. He is putting the baking dish in the oven and she is about to help herself to another taste from the sauce when he whips his head her way, a genuine smile forming on his mouth at her widened eyes of surprise. "That bad?"

"No," Spencer says. "No. Really good, actually."

The smile on his lips grows bigger. "Hopefully the chicken is just as good. I had it at this little restaurant back in Maine and I always wanted to try it at home but…"

But… but nothing. Toby trails off, a nearly invisible wince accompanying his movements as he leans against the counter next to her. Spencer takes that in for a second – his posture, his reaction to memories and a life he would rather leave behind – and remarks, looking away politely so as to grant him some space to sort through his thoughts and feelings should he need it, "You never really talk about Maine."

"Mhm," he agrees or perhaps deflects, crossing his arms. "You never really talk about Chicago."

She laughs as she glances at him and finds him there with a deliberate twinkle of amusement in his gaze. It's sincere, her laughter; he _is_ right after all. She doesn't talk about Chicago much. She doesn't particularly _like_ talking about Chicago much. What is there to speak about anyway? One of the many stories about her tiny office and her old job that had felt like a cage, especially on days where her jealousy of people who were somehow bigger, who were somehow much _better_ – gratuitously sponsored by Mona's Instagram feed that is _still_ plastered with updates from all over the world – tasted like bitter and never-ending disappointment in herself? Stories about being so goddamn lonely, so starved, so _desperate_ for warmth and a fleeting illusion of intimacy, an actual human connection, that she would regularly agree to meet with strange men online after a mere one or two hours of boring, emoji-ridden conversations? Stories about first drinking and then crying on her floor; stories about first crying and then smoking in a bar's restroom more expensive than she could afford; maybe stories about both smoking _and_ drinking in front of the seventh, eighth, ninth episode in a row of some Netflix production? Or perhaps it's the fifteen or so books about his absence he is after, he is secretly waiting to read in its entirety; chapter over long-winded chapter about missing him at night when the sun was fast asleep, and the moon tortured her with thoughts she didn't _want_ to consciously think about but didn't really stop from engulfing her either?

_No_ , she interrupts herself with an internal snort. If anything, it's probably the fucking light post that deserves to receive another comeback, isn't it? His not-a-wedding to Yvonne, Aria's lecture in her car, Oscar's sonogram, the quinoa salad… everything about _that_ cursed day is a perfect summary of her brief albeit horrible time in Chicago.

But theirs – their relationship, their friendship, their something or other – is built entirely upon compromise now. Upon respect and the awareness that some things need to be left unsaid in order for the new world as it is to continue spinning uninterrupted. She can't possibly tell him how miserable she was in Chicago (even though she has the sinking feeling that he _knows_ ) and he can't possibly tell her how miserable he was in Maine (even though she can tell whenever she looks at him, catches him off-guard, catches that sad frown on his features too). They can't do these things because it would break apart everything they are. She can almost see it: heartfelt conversations on his sofa, maybe a bottle of cheap sparkling wine like at Aria's Christmas party although that had ended quite disastrously for them both, hadn't it; two hangovers from hell and pissed off Pizza Hut employees. She can see it though, vividly, if she focuses hard enough, see them sitting side by side on the sofa, a couple of salty tears spilled eventually at memories dead, a few quips frivolously throwing the world's lamest pity party, several sarcastic remarks drunk on chuckles and shared laughter, and then, and then hungry kisses out of nowhere, only it wouldn't be out of nowhere, of course, because they have been doing this dizzy dance non-stop for months now but it would _feel_ like it happened suddenly, like they have lost control over themselves and their trembling bodies that are all but aching with the overwhelming desire to become one again as clothes are torn on their way to his bed in the corner because that's what she wants… no, that's what she _does_ when she feels bad. That's when she does when she is confronted with feelings she doesn't look forward to facing – _and that's the very definition of trigger, Ms. Hastings_ , Dr. Mizrahi says inside her head – and she… she can't do that to him. _They_ can't do that to each other, can't risk throwing everything they have managed to raise up from the ground, from next to nothing.

Honestly, though, she muses, twisting her pursed lips to the side. Apart from all that, she mostly wishes he wouldn't smell so good because she suspects that it would _probably_ help a lot with figuring out whether this is genuine sexual tension they are dealing with (she wonders if he has been with anyone else after Yvonne and she _knows_ , of course she does, that it's not her place, not anymore, and yet she wonders and wonders and expertly keeps her social media stalking to herself) or a genuine rush of lost feelings overclouding her senses (in her mind, memories of his fingertips running over her body like her skin is made of porcelain and before her eyes, Toby running his fingers through his hair that is slightly longer than normal and _god_ ) or her genuinely screwed up personality craving intimacy to deal with letting her therapist poke stubborn holes into her façade (she is staring, she know she is staring, and it's creepy, right, a complete violation of boundaries, it's disrespectful, and – and it's desire on a fucking quantum level, it's something primal, and it's her body slowly eating itself from the inside up with how much she wishes they would just give in, indulge, only for a minute or thirty, get it out of their systems and then return to this foreign place where they can continue to play pretend and act like they are fine with it).

Toby cocks his eyebrow at her sudden silence and she hastily fakes an overzealous smile.

Once upon a time, she would have asked herself if there was a chance, no matter how small and unlikely, that he felt the same but these days, it all but appears as though he is utterly terrified of her; terrified of accidentally drowning in what they were, terrified of accidentally allowing _her_ to get lost in him. What was it that he had said? _This friendship thing just sounds like it has the potential to become really, really complicated_. And maybe he was right. This definitely feels more than complicated. And confusing.

"There was this little restaurant on the mainland," Toby speaks up then, inevitably distracting Spencer from her thoughts. She lifts her gaze to look at him. "I used to go there sometimes, you know, after school or between classes. It was nice and a lot better than the island. All you could get there was fish and as delicious as that was the first few weeks, I got _so_ sick of it eventually."

She nods while holding in her chuckle for the most part, but he interrupts her once more, giving her the eyebrow like he had done before. "Oh, is it my turn…?" As a response to her question, there follows another nod, his pretty eyes twinkling, _sparkling_ in the light, and she kind of _really_ wishes he would quit confusing her further all while remaining so damn oblivious or perhaps ignorant to the extent of her inner conflict. She sorts through the broad range of Chicago stories available inside her head and memory, struggling to find one that she can share without going down _that_ incredibly risky road that she is trying her best to avoid.

As expected, the light post flashes inside her mind again. Spencer sighs and with his eyes fixated on her, pulling her deeper into a stagnant state of puzzlement – or maybe blind desire and… and… a little bit of infatuation too? _No_ , she cuts herself off, _that's not it_ – she halts and says, the words tumbling from her mouth, "Well, uh, have I told you that I was a waitress for a couple of months?"

He seems taken aback by that. _Finally_ , she thinks. Finally, something Emily hadn't let him in on behind Spencer's back. Toby raises not one but two eyebrows this time. "Waitress?"

"Yeah. Waitressing, asking my parents for money, eating ramen noodles every day for _weeks_ , forgetting what off-season vegetables taste like because they're too expensive… I did the whole college experience way after college but better late than never, right?"

Toby frowns. "I thought you worked in sales?"

"I did. And then I… quit?" she replies nonchalantly, shrugs. "Which, don't get me wrong, felt awesome for about ten minutes until I realized that I was unemployed, hadn't sent out any job applications, and didn't have a single clue as to what I was supposed to be doing with my life."

He hums, weighing his words or thinking back to similar experiences, she doesn't know, as he turns to inspect the bottle of sparkling wine on the counter behind him, holds it up for Spencer to see and proceeds to pull a disgusted face. She would have found it adorable too if she wasn't instantly reminded of Aria's Christmas party – or at least those parts during which her brain was sober and managed to store away a few saccharine memories. Against her will, she mimics his expression and shakes her head.

"Yeah. Thought so," Toby states. "Are you okay with soda? I think I have beer… somewhere…"

Spencer wrinkles her nose slightly. Beer makes her think of Caleb and she _really_ doesn't want to be thinking of Caleb right no—she doesn't want to think of Caleb, _ever_. Period.

"Soda's fine."

To her great horror and maybe equal parts sickly sweet amusement, Toby picks up the bottle of Coke and makes his way to the sofa. Noting that she has no choice but to follow, Spencer sinks her teeth into her lower lip and walks behind him, sitting down moments after he does. On the opposite end, of course, leaving more than enough space between their bodies to reduce the tension that is apparently lost on him.

"So?" she prompts as she takes off her shoes, then neatly folds her legs underneath her.

"So?" he echoes.

"So what about Maine?"

" _You_ went from politics to sales to waitressing and now health care," Toby responds easily, once more deflecting, avoiding, changing the topic, and leans back. "That's way more interesting."

"Well, I disagree." She leans over to put her drink on the small coffee table, somehow succeeds in ignoring the bed that is right behind them. "Come on, Toby. You lived on an island for a year. There has to be at least one interesting story you can share." _Something that preferably doesn't involve Yvonne but I'm not gonna say that aloud because it'll make me look like the crazy ex._

She is a horrible human being, but he doesn't notice. He never does. He doesn't answer straight away and instead hums into his glass for a second, pensive, maybe, and hastily sorting through his library of memories like she had to. Eventually, he snorts in a dry manner and asks, without it being a question, "You wanna know about Maine?" He takes a sip as well, gazing off to the right, away from her eyes. "It _sucked_. Out of all places we could've moved to, we chose a small town where everyone and their parents know each other. People didn't like us. I couldn't get a job for months because we were outsiders from – quote, unquote – some town in Pennsylvania no one has ever heard of before. I mean, getting groceries was already an experience in itself – _frozen pizza again? Didn't you guys already have frozen pizza twice this month? Don't you know how to cook?_ "

Spencer laughs in disbelief. "You're kidding."

"I wish I was," Toby mumbles wearily. "Yvonne's friends were mostly nice and all but the rest of them? Sometimes I felt like people were judging me for just… taking a walk after dinner. It was Rosewood all over, only this time I wasn't accused of killing a girl that wasn't dead. At least people back then had a pretty good reason to hate me."

"They didn't," she states in a sharp voice, shooting the side of his face a confused frown. "You were innocent. Both times. Not just Ali's alleged 'murder' but-"

"I know," he interrupts her gently, lifting his gaze to glance at her. "But _they_ didn't know that. So, honestly, who can blame them for repeating what they were told by the police?"

She feels weirdly guilty and thinks that she probably deserves it.

"It's the small-town curse, I suppose," Spencer speaks up after a couple of beats, emits a sigh and hugs the throw pillow beside her. "I heard it can even turn the smartest people into a bunch of headless chickens that will eat up whatever someone with slight authority claims is the truth. And, you know, gossip. People love gossip."

He returns her hesitant attempt at a well-meaning smile effortlessly. She feels warm or hot or perhaps both and then some. "I guess that wasn't too much of a problem for you? In Chicago?"

"Yeah," she retorts but doesn't quite know if she agrees. "Yeah, no, it _was_ a nice change at first but the, uh, anonymity? It did get a little isolating sometimes… it's also kinda weird to have no idea what your neighbors look like even though you can hear them have sex all the time."

Toby pulls a sympathetic face. "Well, maybe it's for the best that you never found out what they look like and got a picture to go with the, um, audio."

She mulls that over, laughs. "Yeah, no, you're right. But sometimes, I kind of miss it." On his mock-baffled look and pulled up brows, she rolls her eyes and hits his arm with the pillow in her grasp. "I miss _Chicago_. Not _that_. Ultimately, it wasn't right for me and I'm aware that I'm romanticizing it in my head 'cuz I also remember being fucking miserable most of the time but god… sometimes, I miss my apartment. And my fire escape. Well, actually, I think it's the fire escape that I miss the most."

Regarding her, something unidentifiable in his gaze, his fingers begin toying with the pillow absently, and she averts her eyes, takes another sip from her Coke to avoid him. Then he says, and she inwardly groans though part of her _had_ been expecting it, "Miserable how?"

_Great_. Another step closer to the abyss, the scenario she had painted on a canvas earlier and can clearly reconstruct now; they are heading down a path which they won't be able to recover from, right, because she will spill her misery, spill her heart, spill her love or lust or whatever this is, and everything and nothing in-between.

She clears her throat, decides to dismiss his question and counters with an inquiry of her own. "Is there anything about Maine that you miss?"

Lucky for her, Toby is too polite to call her out.

"No," he answers almost immediately, like he doesn't even have to think about it. "I did in the beginning. But I don't think I was missing _Maine_. I was just craving stability." She frowns, and he adds, sounding casual despite his words, "I had to stay in a motel for a while after I came to Boston. And then I lived on this old woman's couch for about… I wanna say, two and a half months? While working three different jobs and figuring out school."

"That sounds exhausting."

"Yeah, believe me, it wasn't fun. But it could've been worse."

Silence settles then, occupies the negative space which their bodies have created, and she idly notes that it's probably her turn to talk again, to write another grand big tale about her year and some in Chicago and she has no clue what there is to say. She is cautiously tiptoeing along an invisible line that she suspects she already has crossed before by bringing her misery into it and suggesting topics they had mutually chosen to stay away from – _at least when sober_ , she adds, thinking back to Aria and Ezra's porch. With her soda in her hands, she risks a glance at him, catches his face ridden by guilt, hesitancy and then _fear_ , as if he is about to throw up a sentence he fully knows he will regret once he allows it to flow freely from his lips and she – she wants to stop him. She wants to say, _don't. Please don't make it worse now. Whatever you want to say, just hold it in and don't say it. Remember keeping things simple? Keeping things only platonic?_

But Toby, stubborn as hell, doesn't listen.

He says, looking virtually anywhere but at her, "I, um… I lied to you…"

Spencer freezes up. "Okay," she replies. "About what?"

"Back in…" He breaks off, clears his throat, stares into his lap, a frown appearing on his pained features. "Back in Maine, you texted me when you got the invitation and-"

_Oh._

_Huh._

_Well, that's weird_ , she thinks, positively numb. There he is, the boy that had crushed on her and crushed her heart, the boy that is now a grown man, and he is talking about the wedding invite and a lie he had told so many months ago, but her body – her body is reacting the way it had on the day he left her dorm room for the last time. It's not tears that fill her eyes, not anger or a wave of agonizing sadness that proceed to dig a pitch-black hole in her guts. Not even confusion embracing her like a concerned mother would. Only – only _nothing_ with a lot of _something_ that tastes like… that tastes like… she doesn't know.

"And I… acted like I didn't know it was you…"

" _Toby_ ," she interrupts him, slightly loud, slightly panicked. She laughs it off like it doesn't mean anything. "You lied. So what? It's been over a year. Don't beat yourself up about it. It's fine."

Is it though? Before her inner eye, she recognizes traces of the invitation that had been a harsh wake-up call to everything wrong in her life; to his message that had somehow further broken what was already beyond repair; to meaningless dates and hookups while clinging to the hope that they would, could, might fill the gaps inside her; to empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays; to the light post looking _so_ pretty and _so_ weirdly peaceful for a second… just for a few beats…

"I'm not trying to… I swear I'm not trying to make this unnecessarily complicated."

"Well, see, you _are_ making it 'unnecessarily complicated' though," she responds, shaking her head. "It's really not that big of a deal. You acted like you didn't know it was me… so? People _literally_ do that all the time when they don't feel like talking to someone. Besides, if you recall, you already let me know that you initially didn't want to keep in touch anyway. Let's just drop it. It was painful enough the first time you said it. I don't wanna have to do this all over again."

"I swear that's not why I brought it up," he explains gently. "I… I just wanted to apologize. You don't have to accept it or anything but I'm really sorry. That was a fucked-up thing to do."

"It's fine."

For a moment, he goes quiet against the meekness of her voice and she in turn goes quiet against the blur of memories happily dancing around inside her head, quiet against the inexplicable but all-consuming, violent urge to push and push and push – push more, push him _away_ or perhaps push him _back_ so that he can hurt as badly as she had when she received that stupid text, then push him against the couch too and effortlessly push herself into his lap and… Spencer exhales deeply, squeezing her eyes shut. _God, what the fuck is wrong with her today?_

"Is it really or are you just saying that?" he asks. Furrowing her brow, she musters all her courage to look up. He isn't looking back and directs the rest of his question at his lap. "I don't wanna make it worse and you don't have to say anything if you don't want to but… um, you don't seem very 'fine' right now."

She proceeds to smile at him – a little tiny, a little weak, but it _is_ a smile, right, so it _does_ count – and answers, "No. No, don't worry. I swear I'm better now. Generally speaking, I mean. I just don't like talking about the time period right _before_ and _after_ the invitation. Like I said, Chicago wasn't always a happy place for me. Even though I miss it."

He tries again. "What happened?"

She decides to let him. "Yeah, I have no idea," she says, sighs and gives a slight shrug. "A stupid job that made me unhappy. Loneliness. The wedding invitation and your text were just the icing on the metaphorical cake. It's not your fault – well, I guess it _kind of_ is, but you couldn't have known that I wasn't doing well and that it would… you know, make things worse for a while."

Again, he takes that in and clears his throat. "I'm… I thought a lot about you. In Maine."

"Toby…" she begins as softly as she can. Meanwhile, her heart stops beating in anticipation for what he might or might not say next, but she doesn't want to hear it. "Look, you don't have to explain yourself. These are things we probably should learn to leave behind."

"Probably," he half-agrees as he pulls a grimace that he sends the throw pillow in his hold. "But I want you to know – I want you to understand that I wasn't trying to hurt you or… or rub my happiness in your face or something. I just – I thought about you a lot, Spencer. I thought about you more than I'm willing to admit right now and I felt horrible doing that to Yvonne. I felt like I owed it to her and myself to let go. I felt like I owed it to _you_."

She sniffles a little. Nods.

"So I, um, deleted your number. It didn't help though. I'd still… I'd still think about you. And I still recognized it was you when you wrote me. I read that text so many times, I still… I still know what it said – _hey. Congratulations. I finally got the invitation the other day. I don't think I'll be able to make it though. Do you guys have an Amazon wishlist or something?_ "

She sniffles more. Nods again.

"I couldn't buy anything from Amazon for months without having to fight the urge to call you."

She sniffles. Chuckles. Nods once more.

"And I… it wasn't my idea to invite you," he goes on. "Yvonne wanted you there and no, I didn't understand her reasoning behind it either."

"Wait, _Yvonne_ invited me?" she echoes, raising her eyebrows. "Wow. Talk about power move."

"I doubt it," Toby says, a certain defeat to his tone as he pulls up his shoulders. "She isn't a bad person, you know. I don't think _that_ was her intention."

It takes Spencer ten whole seconds to figure out that this time, it's not bitterness roaring its three heads somewhere inside her, but good, old jealousy gifting Yvonne's name with the taste of spoiled milk. She brushes her hair out of her face, fiddles with her bangs, to craft and put on a mask of nonchalance and escape his look long enough to swallow all of the emotions she isn't supposed to be feeling.

"I'm really sorry, Spencer," he continues quietly, and she asks herself whether they were sitting this dangerously close all along or whether they keep moving towards each other like two stars mere moments before colliding.

"You couldn't have known."

"I should have."

"Well, you _couldn't_ ," she insists, unwillingly slipping into the same soft tone. "We both thought the other one was happy and having the time of their fucking life. You couldn't have known. I mean, _I_ didn't even realize how much Chicago wrecked me until I came here. And I didn't know how miserable you were in Maine either. I probably shouldn't have texted you in the first place."

"To be honest, I'm glad you did." _Huh_. His eyelashes, she thinks and tilts her head to the side, are _awfully_ long for a guy. How had she never noticed until now? "It was almost like… like a wake-up call? I don't wanna say that it's what triggered the, um… it's not what made me leave the island and come here but… it kind of made me stop and revaluate my life choices a little."

Spencer raises her eyebrows and can't help it – she laughs and yes, it's a goddamn giggle. It's a _girlish_ giggle that Aria would relentlessly tease her for. Giving an inward groan at herself, she recovers as fast as she can, turns her laughter into a smirk. "That's what _your_ text did for me."

"Weird," he whispers. His gaze, though, just as expected, inevitably drops when she crosses her legs, thigh brushing against his. _Now_ that _is a power move_ , she gleefully adds and produces another smile out of nowhere, doe eyes and all. Then: _oh my god, stop it. What the hell are you doing? Who even gets turned on by honesty and opening up about feelings?_

"Hm… I don't think it's _that_ weird, actually." If he has realized by now that her voice has gone into a rasp, that it is so low that it's practically crawling around on his floor, somewhere beneath their feet, he is really good at hiding his reaction to it. "I don't know about you, but you always made me wanna strive to be a better person. The best version of myself that I can be, you know? And Chicago Spencer _definitely_ wasn't the best version of me. Not even in the top ten."

Toby snorts, amused. "Well, the feeling's mutual."

He scratches at his stubbly cheek nervously, anxiously, and for second or two, she forgets how to breathe. And it indeed _is_ weird but not what he had commented on: earlier, her pain and anger at the world and the unfairness of it had awoken insatiable rage inside her, the urge to destroy him, herself, and everyone standing in her way. But right now? Right now, with his eyes focused on her – with his eyes looking into hers, and his warmth so close and not close enough, all it does is make her want to… heal. Be better. Be complete. Be _happy_.

(All it does is make her want to undress herself wholly, let him see her, and what she means is see _all_ of her, including the ugly parts, the light post, the broken heart, the people that have left their marks on her. All it does is make her wish he would stare at her, then, and love her anyway, love _those_ part of her too. Love her _still_? Love her _again_? Love her enough for them both until she is finally ready to do the same?)

_We'll never be friends, will we_ , she thinks. _This was a stupid idea._

"Uh… well, we wanna eat dinner at some point, right?" Toby states then, gives a short but very strange-sounding laugh, like he is on edge. "Heh. I should probably check the chicken."

"Yeah, you should," Spencer answers and nods. "It smells delicious."

What he doesn't do: he doesn't lean in suddenly, he doesn't catch her totally off-guard, doesn't kiss her puzzlement, doesn't kiss her despite her not knowing what it is that she wants from him right now. He doesn't decide to take advantage of their shared fragility, this _weirdness_ that has gotten up to let sexual tension sit down instead; tension that they are both obviously more than overwhelmed by. He doesn't attempt to explore her over her shirt with rough hands, doesn't try and push up her skirt with urgency and impatience. He doesn't pick her up without a word and carry her to the bed like part of her thought – like part of her almost _wished_ he would. He doesn't look at her with joyous greed, as though she is only a short-term distraction until someone better comes along. Or, in some cases, someone better _comes back_. Doesn't make bittersweet promises that they are both aware he won't keep the second he rolls off her.

What he does instead: it seems as though he is fighting with himself, a wave of emotions passing over his features slowly, one by one. Most prominently: confusion, and something that vaguely resembles obvious, heart-wrenching dilemma. And then, then he appears to win the battle that is raging on within him, because eventually, he _does_ lean in, bit by bit though, inch by fucking inch, as if he wants to make sure to give her time to lean away, and when she doesn't, when she just gazes at him, eyes big and hopeful, slightly dazzled and drunk, he brushes his mouth against her forehead, so tender, so careful, she nearly doesn't feel it at all.

He is _so_ soft. Everything about him is always so fucking soft.

(And sometimes, she kind of hates how he effortlessly manages to soften her too.)

* * *

In January, after _months_ of legal battles, numerous trips to the bank, and tons of anxious thumb twiddling, Emily's friend Cody gets to fulfill one of her biggest dreams from her college days: buying her own establishment. Cody's choice, though, isn't a bakery nor a café on the corner like Emily had once half-drunkenly confessed she would love to run while her and Toby were binge-watching _Food Network_ together – Cody's choice is an old, rundown bar near the Village that hasn't seen an ounce of sunlight in years. In February, then, a few weeks and some later, and likely in-between, groans, sighs and growls of exhaustion, off-brand beer, broken glass all over and an ever-growing pile of bills, Emily wipes her forehead on the back of her hand, turns to Cody and suggests that they could call up her carpenter friend who lives in Boston, _but he'd totally drive down here and help us for free_.

At least that's what Toby assumes must have happened. So Emily calls him up for another _super tiny favor_ like she had last Christmas and yes, Toby _is_ aware that him giving into Emily's pleas over the phone has started to form a weird pattern of some sorts. Nevertheless, he loyally arrives in New York the following Friday and is all but saddened by the graying picture that is awaiting him there. What once had to have been a cozy, comfortable, _lively_ bar is now a skeleton of it; rich history told through dust sitting in the corners, through white-turned-yellowish wallpaper coming off, through dirty windows glaring at passers-by. Trash everywhere, creative graffiti, several doors with suspicious holes in them that Toby's cop side is too wise to point out to Cody if she hasn't already figured it out herself. Counters stolen, a broken sink – _actually, make that two,_ Toby adds – toilets missing lids and lids missing toilets.

"It's bad, isn't it?" Emily asks through clenched teeth, a happy but entirely fake grin stretching her cheeks beyond recognition and subsequently keeping her worried scowl from being born.

"Uh… well, do you want my honest opinion? Yeah. It's… it's pretty bad. Nothing that can't be fixed though, don't worry," Toby answers as he kneels on the floor to inspect the cabinet under the kitchen sink. "Sorry for asking but Cody knew what she was getting into when she decided on this place, right?"

"No idea," Emily responds. "She's almost 41, Tobes, and this has been a dream of hers for over two decades. Part of me thinks she's _really_ stupid and another part of me can't blame her for signing the contract and hoping it'll be fine in the end. I mean, it's basically impossible to find _anything_ affordable near the Village these days. No wonder she just went with the first one she saw before someone else could."

"It _will_ be fine in the end," Toby assures her and grabs his wrench from his toolbelt before going to work. "I can't get her the customers she needs to keep this place running long-term, but I _can_ fix what's still fixable. She'll eventually have to invest in some professionals though. There's no way around it."

Emily furrows her eyebrows at him. " _You_ are a professional."

"I'm a carpenter, Em. Not an electrician. Not a plumber," he explains as he turns his head in an attempt to actually _see_ something. "There's plenty of stuff I don't know how to do."

"You built a house on your own."

His facial expression partially hidden by the moldy darkness under the sink, Toby pulls a slight grimace. He would rather not think of the house. Or Rosewood. Or Yvonne, for that matter.

"Yeah," he mumbles, refusing to come back up and meet her gaze fully. "But building a house and renovating a bar? Not the same."

She goes silent, apparently taking in his obvious discomfort. "There's a first time for everything. Seriously, thank you so much for doing this. I owe you dinner."

Once more, and sort of unwillingly too, Toby wrinkles his nose into the dark. Emily isn't what anyone would call a talented or even halfway decent cook. He doesn't want to hurt her feelings, however, so he just replies, "Dinner sounds great. Who are we trying to impress though?"

"What do you mean?"

"You called me here to help your 'friend' and I just assumed that, y'know, your 'friend' might be… more than a friend?"

"Ha, ha," she retorts in a dry manner and nudges his side with her foot, earning a quiet _oomph_ sound from him. "I'm not trying to 'impress' anyone. I know Cody's wife. We volunteer at the same center in Harlem. I'm helping a friend, that's all." Following his non-reaction, she adds, undoubtedly accompanied by an eye-roll, "Besides I'm… _sort of_ talking to someone. And _no_ , she isn't here right now, so you can feel free to drop it."

"Hmmm…"

" _Hmmm_ …" Emily mimics dramatically. "By the way, you have no right to tease me 'cuz I think you're doing the same, considering your phone hasn't shut up _once_ since we drove here from my place."

That _does_ manage to squeeze a response out of him. He promptly hits the top of his head against the sink when, after her remark, eagerness overpowers him, and he straightens up right away. With a laugh, Emily reaches out her hand to stroke his hair like she is petting a dog.

"Seriously?" she wonders aloud, rolls her eyes again. "I guess it must be someone important."

He wisely chooses to remain quiet and shoots her a shy grin that she, of course, retorts with one of her own easily and then, not in the mood to waste another beat, he grabs his phone from the counter – from _one_ of the three counters left in Cody's new bar. Emily's observation was a slight exaggeration though, he finds quickly; he has a couple of unread mails from some mailing list he had forgotten to unsubscribe from and four new texts from Spencer which hardly translates to 'not shutting up once since we drove here from my place' but perhaps that is just Toby and his childish disappointment speaking. It really is kind of silly, almost, the pure joy and _warmth_ that instantly fills him when he spots her name on his screen. She is currently on a business trip in Quebec and they haven't been talking as much as they normally do – as much as they have been doing since the Fritz' Christmas party, anyway. And again, it's the small things that make his heart flutter in excitement, jump about his chest like a toddler high on sugar; the texts she never forgets to send him throughout the day despite being busy and overworked as hell, funny memes and rants, the way she sporadically and _utterly_ loses herself in yet another caffeinated ramble that might sound kind of overwhelming and incoherent to the untrained ear, but Toby is a pro, _fluent_ in Spencer even – _still_ is, is _again_ , who the fuck knows. Certainly not him.

The first text, received a little over three hours ago, reads: _Quebec is gorgeous. I'd really love to come back one day. You know, when I have enough time to actually see more of it instead of having to watch people from my hotel window like a creep._

Toby smiles.

The second text she had apparently sent two hours ago: _Yeah, forgot what I said. I just walked through the fucking rain without an umbrella and now I have ten minutes left to fix my hair and makeup before the meeting. Fuck Quebec._

This time, Toby chuckles.

Then, the third and fourth texts, each sent about ten minutes prior: _Meeting was okay. How are things in NY?_ and _When are you coming back Sunday, BTW? Wanna grab lunch?_

Aware of Emily's eyes burning questions marks into the back of his head as he reads through Spencer's messages one by one, Toby tries to overlook his friend's teasing grin and inquiry, and writes: _Sorry, didn't mean to ignore you. It's kinda crazy around here. Glad the meeting went fine even though your morning wasn't._ He stops and scrolls through the emoji tab, wonders why every single one looks disturbing before settling on an umbrella and a smiley face that he hopes won't make his reply sound like something it isn't, and continues: _Don't think I'll be home for lunch. Wanna make it Netflix and dinner?_

But as soon as his thumb hits send, and he helplessly watches his question go up in a perfectly blue bubble, too late to take back and erase, he regrets it. He regrets it _big time_. Way to fucking go. Instead of focusing on finding an emoji that would keep their texting grounded on a purely platonic level, that would keep their innocent back-and-forth polite, Toby _probably_ should have paid more attention to his words because that, _that_ was definitely weird, wasn't it? Inappropriate too. _Netflix and dinner_. Like he is asking her out on an actual date. Like he is trying to get her to come to his apartment with the sole intention of… what was he thinking? He groans.

Her answer, surprisingly, comes in moments after: _Netflix and dinner sounds good. My place or yours?_

And then: smirking emoji.

Toby stares at his phone, drawing his eyebrows together in puzzlement. A _smirking_ emoji? What is that supposed to mean? Did he ever mention that texting is confusing, and he would deeply appreciate if someone wrote a functional manual? _Is she_ … he cuts himself off and tilts his head to the side, then to the other, as though convinced that a slight change in perspective might also offer a slight change of interpretation. But, as expected, it doesn't work, and the same question lingers on, only louder now: _is she flirting with him?_ Is that what's going… that can't be right. He cuts himself off again. Friends don't flirt and that's all they are, right? Even if Toby still has some issues categorizing the various emotions that hit him like a truck whenever she lifts her eyes, catches him staring, smiles at him in that beautiful way—

_Ignore the smirk. I just thought it was funny because I asked 'my place or yours'._

_You know… because it's so fucking cheesy?_

_And, you know, to my defense, your 'Netflix and dinner' sounded hilarious too._

' _Netflix and dinner' 'Netflix and chill'_

_I didn't mean to be weird._

_Sorry._

Judging by the rapid onslaught of messages – which, to be fair, are nothing out of the ordinary for Spencer though she normally becomes more of a notorious double texter when she has had way too much coffee while watching her favorite true crime shows – that keep popping up, only for another gray bubble to appear in their place a split second later, no doubt signaling several more profoundly apologetic texts, she has caught onto the awkwardness sitting up in its bed and stretching its arms sleepily. Toby pulls a tiny grimace. He doesn't want her to feel bad for hitting send on a silly emoticon she hadn't put much thought into. Sure, they are still inhabiting an odd place without a name and all, dangerously close to sidestepping barriers and summoning even odder thoughts he _is_ able to categorize despite not yet having found the right terms to slap onto his feelings – thoughts best called _pining_ , _longing_ and _desiring_ , love's long-lost cousins. But it doesn't have to be a big deal if they don't want to make it into one.

For a couple of beats, Toby keeps looking at his phone, keeps sipping on his miserable cocktail of uncertainty and insecurity, and then, with a prolonged eye-roll, concludes: _to hell with it_. He grabs the awkwardness and shoves it out of the building. To hell with it, indeed. If they are _both_ a little weird, a little inappropriate for two friends-turned-exes-turned-friends-again, it will sort of cancel each other out, right, and she will finally stop feeling bad over a stupid text message.

He types: _wellll… my place is more comfortable._ And: smirking emoji.

_Actually_ … He carefully adds three. _There. Send_.

Spencer replies with a laughing emoji. A sure-to-be goofy smile forms on his mouth that Toby doesn't bother stifling despite Emily sending him another highly inquisitive look from beside the window as she picks up the dirty rag from the bucket by her feet. Then: _Your place it is then. LMK when you're back_.

They treat themselves to a lunch break a few hours of hard work later. Soledad, one of the women helping with the renovations, returns with Chinese from her takeout run and the group breaks into the same snicker when Yamille, who had left an hour prior to drop off her car keys at her wife's workplace, comes back with Chinese takeout as well. Unsurprisingly, it's… a lot of food. _Way_ too much food, even for six adults – Toby and Emily, Cody and her wife Jaz, Soledad and Yamille – so Toby and Cody end up in the back of the bar where they put the leftovers into several Tupperware containers, sponsored by Emily's inner Pam Fields.

An unspoken agreement happens after the last container meets its lid – they both choose to stick around, trying to buy themselves and each other some more time before they inevitably have to get back to work. Meanwhile, in the front of the bar, the four women are singing along to some Reggaetón track that Toby doesn't recognize. It lifts the mood considerably though; the pair in the back exchanges a smile as Cody sits down on an abandoned chair by the table, digs into her chest pocket before producing a pack of _Pall Mall_. She proceeds to stick it out in his direction.

When he declines, Cody hums her approval, one lazy hand rubbing at the back of her head and running through her short hair. "Good boy. It's kind of a nasty habit, anyways."

"Not to mention expensive," Toby responds as she lights her cigarette without further ado and he wouldn't say that he particularly likes the smell of cigarette smoke or anything but in a way, it's comforting, like recognizing a scent from childhood. It makes him think of Spencer. "Have you tried quitting?"

"Eh. Bunch of times. Never worked. I'm just happy I don't smoke as much like I used to when I was your age." She shrugs. "Sure this don't bother you?"

"No." He shakes his head. "It's fine. My, uh, my friend's a smoker too. I'm kinda used to it."

Cody furrows her eyebrows. "Em?"

He laughs. "No. Uh, a different friend. In Boston."

"A boyfriend?" She pauses briefly to give him the once-over. "Or, I guess it's a girlfriend?"

Once more, he laughs. "No. It's, uh, it's just a friend. Really," he clarifies, trying and miserably failing to ignore the familiar, warm and sickeningly sweet tug at his heart as he breathes in the woman's secondhand smoke filling the air.

"You started your internship yet?" On his pulled-up eyebrow, she adds, blowing out the smoke from her cigarette but still mindful to exhale it away from his face, "Em said you're an architect in the making. When are you starting your internship?"

That is _definitely_ not one of his favorite subjects to discuss. He grimaces which prompts a slight, empathetic laugh from the older woman that he can't help but reciprocate. "Uh… next year? Hopefully. I don't know. I haven't really… applied to anything yet, to be honest."

"Well, don't be a fool when you do start working for real," Cody says in a gentle tone and Toby wisely refrains from pointing out to a fortysomething woman that he has indeed been _working for real_ since he was a teenager and that working part-time _is_ an actual job. "My brother – same as you. Didn't smoke. Wouldn't even touch coffee or energy drinks. Then he starts _his_ internship and to fit in with his coworkers, he picks up smoking. He's much worse than me now."

Toby smiles. "I'll be careful."

"You better be," she responds and throws him a smile as well. "Do you know if you wanna stay in Boston for your internship? How long is it again – two years or something?"

"No, it's, it's three years. Well, _approximately_ three years before I'm allowed to officially call myself an architect." He slips both of his hands into his pockets, sort of wishing one of the women in the front would rush in and change the topic to something way less anxiety-inducing than his future. "As for Boston… I have a life over there, so I'd prefer staying but, uh, moving isn't out of the question. I mean, as long as it is somewhere nearby, you know?"

He is about to continue his nervous ramblings, but Cody interrupts him. "New York's close to Boston."

"Yeah…?" He frowns at her. "Last time I checked, it was."

Again, a little laugh escapes her at the – most likely – stupid as hell expression on his face. "I'm gonna be real with you," she begins as she cautiously pours the remains of Soledad's Coke into a cup and then throws her cigarette butt in it. "I didn't know how to bring it up to you 'cuz we barely know each other but you seem like an all right guy and if New York's fine with you, my brother would love to have a new architect intern to go fetch coffee for him."

The confused frown between his eyebrows doesn't fade. "Are you offering me a job?"

"Hell no. I wish I could, butI can't offer you a job. I work at a school and _this_ …" She gestures around her. "…is what I'm planning on doing after I quit, and I doubt you wanna pay off your college loans by working as a barkeeper for the rest of your life. What I'm saying is, connections are important, and I can talk to my brother. Make sure he sees your application. Put in in a good word for you. Give him your number so you can talk."

Before he can formulate a response, she goes on, apparently sensing his uncertainty, "You don't have to make a decision right now, but you're ambitious and hard-working, and you're quick on your feet. You'll find an internship anywhere and Boston's great and all but… New York's New York, y'know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean," he echoes with a smile playing at his lips that he hopes verbalizes his gratitude better than _he_ currently can against his hesitancy. "But you're also kinda biased."

"Course I'm biased. I literally don't get why anyone would pick Boston over New York but you gotta admit that I have a point," she counters as she rises from her chair. "Just think about it. Look up my brother's firm. Look up others too. You got time. But the offer still stands." She pats his arm. "And, y'know, this bar could use a carpenter who doesn't live four hours away."

The rest of the day passes by quickly and it's getting late when they finally decide to head back to Em's apartment. His friend's face has long turned a deep dark shade of what Toby can only describe as grumpy from hunger and bone-deep exhaustion. Two feelings Toby can more than relate to, so the car ride home is mostly silent, save for a few comments directed at the drivers behind them who aren't too pleased with Emily deliberately skipping the turn signal. He looks up the firm of Cody's brother, the older woman's smile and warm words of encouragement still fresh on his mind and emits a sigh. Then, turning down the brightness of his screen and further tilting his phone from Emily's eyes fixated on the road, as though afraid of being caught by her, his fingers all but instinctively go into the Maps App, all but instinctively check the directions from _New York, NY_ to _Worcester, MA_. Google Maps informs him that there are about 180 miles separating both cities from one another and he thinks, pursing his lips to the side, _okay, that's not too bad_ , before emitting another sigh – annoyed this time.

February is vicious and the heating in Emily's Brooklyn apartment, just like the brunette had voiced before leaving Cody's bar, isn't on. They inevitably have to layer up after their respective showers; Emily, without lifting her eyes from her laptop she is balancing on her legs, throws a pair of socks at him and remarks, "Aria forced me to buy these when she had her Etsy store for two months. They're really comfy."

Toby puts them on, a grin pulling at his mouth when he sits down next to her and spots the same socks on her outstretched feet. It feels homey and domestic and he briefly allows himself to get lost in daydreams where weekends and evenings such as this one – with Greek takeout, HGTV, Food Network, and _Jeopardy_ and _The Price Is Right_ and… _god, we are fucking senior citizens, aren't we_ , he comments – become a regular occurrence. Days where he drives home from his internship and picks up Emily from the AIDS center she volunteers at in her spare time and they go on a hike while eating bagels and talking about nothing in particular.

But, like almost every single one of his dreams and fantasies about his dreaded future, _all roads lead back to Rome_. One second, he is thinking about a _Chopped_ marathon, kale chips and beer on Emily's sofa, and the next, the Toby in his fantasy is driving back to his place where he runs into Spencer by the front door and they both giggle because it's the second time this week alone that fate or whatever the fuck has made them come home at the exact same moment. Spencer stands on her tiptoes to kiss him hello and as he brushes her hair behind her ear, regarding her face with an overjoyed smile and his stomach clenching with bliss, she asks how Em is doing – maybe she also adds, _next time you are having your Food Network thing, I'm definitely coming too_ , or perhaps she tells him, _Kathlyn from Finances wants to have drinks this weekend, do you wanna go or do you wanna stay in, pretend we're busy and finally catch up on Stranger Things?_ or something like that. In his fantasy they nearly miss their floor because they are too busy making out while simultaneously making up for time lost on the elevator and they stumble out before the doors can close on them, laughing like teenagers though, of course, they are far from that now. Back home, she sheds her dress and elegantly slips into his shirt and boxers, and he throws his clothes somewhere and slips into a pair of abandoned sweatpants he finds on the back of the dining chair, and they curl up on their couch together, all lazy, lithe and utterly cat-like, his mouth pressed against the back of her neck and his nose pressed against her waves as she tells him about dinner with her friends from work. His hand is resting on her hip, somewhat possessively, sort of not, and eventually, after comfortable silence settles, he hums and proceeds to stroke up under her shirt, fingertip carefully tracing her navel, and she hums too, turning her head to look at him, eyes darkening with arousal as his hand strokes down, down, down and her voice does the same. It's all but scratching the living room floor when she whispers, a flirtatious smirk on her features, _hey_. And he bumps his nose against hers and says, _hi_ , with the very same smirk, and one heated kiss turns into two, and two sloppy kisses turn into three, and three hungry kisses turn into… turn into…

Scrunching up his face into a remorseful, _guilty_ grimace, Toby cuts himself off.

Yeah, he _is_ longing, all right. Longing, pining, craving, the whole package. This is insanity and if he has to be honest, he isn't certain whether this level of… of fucking _obsession_ is healthy in any shape or form, for either party involved. Nevertheless, it's something akin to earsplitting disappointment that knocks at his door when he checks his stupid phone for the sixth time in what feels like ten minutes. No new messages. Well, fine, that's not true – his advisor has finally responded to the email he had sent the other day, and his boss is asking when Toby is coming in next week, but there are zero new texts from Spencer and… he puts his phone on the sofa.

But Emily, on the opposite end of the couch and with her legs resting half on top of her friend's, raises her eyebrows at him. "What?"

"Hm?"

She imitates his groan, eyebrows refusing to sit back down. "What's wrong?"

"Oh. Yeah, no, it's nothing," Toby says, slipping on his words. "Just… just tired, really. And hungry. When did you say the food would be here again?"

Luckily – well, lucky for _him_ , Emily seems to buy into it anyway or perhaps she merely decides to let him have that one, just this once, considering he isn't very willing to share. "I don't know," she answers, stretching her arms over her head before she busies herself with her phone. "They said 40 minutes to an hour. I honestly don't even know if I can stay up for another 40 minutes."

She doesn't, no, but to be fair, neither does Toby. Roughly ten minutes or so later, they are both fast asleep; Toby has his temple against the back of the sofa in what has to be the world's most uncomfortable position and Emily is curled up like a baby. In fact, he is so exhausted, he probably would have slept until the food arrived if his phone hadn't started buzzing right by his hand. Toby pries his eyes open against the irritating sound and sensation, a pinch of annoyance grouchily snarling in the back of his head but that too falls silent once he takes in the name on his screen and his lips – seemingly on their own – curl up into a happy… into a _delighted_ grin.

Somehow, it's not clear to him either, he manages to untangle himself from Emily's legs without waking her, picks up the blanket, covers her with it, and searches for shelter in the bathroom.

Closing the door behind him as softly as he can, he stares at himself in the mirror above the sink, clears his throat once, twice, three times and – "Hey."

"Hi," Spencer greets him, smile evident in her voice. "I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"No. No, you didn't, don't worry," he tells her, combing a nervous hand through his hair to fix what she can't see. "We're still waiting for dinner – yeah, I know, at 11:30 – and I… _kinda_ fell asleep on the couch but it was only for a minute or two. How are you?"

"Honestly? I've never been _this_ tired in my whole life," she responds after a moment where he can hear her struggle with her charger. "I'm actually in bed right now and I can't wait to sleep. How's the bar project going? Have you made any progress yet?"

He sits down on the edge of the bathtub, tells the birds inside his stomach to calm down. "I have no idea. I'm doing what I can, and it looks better than it did this morning but…"

"I'm sure it'll look amazing when you're done, Toby. Don't be so hard on yourself."

"Heh. Well… thanks." He scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, dropping his gaze as though she is there, as though she is around to stare at him, catch the emotions flitting across his eyes and he has to react and hide them quick. "Why are you still up though? Go to sleep. It's late."

"I don't know. Just wanted to…" Spencer trails off for a mere second – a second he nevertheless becomes aware of because his stupid brain seizes that opportunity to try and fill the blanks with utter nonsense: _just wanted to hear your voice, I guess; just wanted to talk to you before I sleep; just wanted to tell you that I miss you and that I can't wait until we're both back_ – before she concludes, "Just wanted to check in. See how you're doing in New York." He bites his bottom lip. His cheeks feel oddly warm. His insides, he notes, do too. She begins rambling in an attempt to change the topic, "Hey, did I ever tell you that Canadian French is fucking horrible?"

"Really? I never had any issues with it."

This time, the smirk in her tone isn't subtle when she remarks, in a fake French accent, "That's because… uh… how do you say… t'es un frimeur?" _You're a showoff_.

He snickers. "Toi tu peux parler." _You're one to talk_.

Spencer instantly gasps in mock-offense. "Je comprends pas. Ça veut dire quoi, ça, Monsieur Cavanaugh?" _I don't understand._ _What is that supposed to mean, Mr. Cavanaugh?_

"Ça veut dire… you were my tutor, Mademoiselle Hastings," he reminds her, running his hand through his hair again. "If I'm a 'showoff', I probably had to get that from somewhere… right?"

"Ugh. Well, you know, whatever, because this ex-tutor here is mostly glad you still remember French as well as you do, seeing as we didn't do a lot of conjugating later on."

"Not true. We still conjugated. It was just… more creative than before. I mean, I learned a bunch of pretty useful and important verbs. Like couvrir un meurtre." _To_ _cover up a murder_. "Aller en prison." _To go to prison_. "Or mentir à la police." _To lie to the police_.

"Mhm," she makes. "And don't forget about embrasser." _To kiss_. "Or baiser." _To fuck_.

Toby's oh-so-clever response pathetically dies inside his throat before it can make its way to his lips because _her_ words – spoken in a low, almost seductive rasp, of course – coil themselves around his neck with ease, sharply cutting off his air supply. He stares at the wall opposite from where he is sat on the edge of Emily's bathtub and breaks into a tense laugh. "Are you drunk?"

"Drunk? No," she retorts playfully, like it doesn't mean anything. _Oh_. Right. His worried laughter then effortlessly transitions into one that is more casual, nonchalant, collected. Doesn't mean anything. "I'm just continuing what you started this morning, 'smirk emoji'."

"No, don't put that on me. _You_ started it. You're the one that said, 'my place or yours'. Not me."

"Yeah? But only because _you_ asked me to come over for 'Netflix and chill'. Like I don't know what that means," she says, and proceeds to add in a quiet, sing-song voice, "You're _so_ busted."

Again, Toby laughs or maybe he hasn't stopped laughing or maybe he is just trying to cover up the fact that he feels pretty damn awkward right now – it's up for debate and a question he will have to find an answer to later. "I didn't say that. What I suggested was Netflix and _dinner_. That's completely different."

"Mhm." He has a hard time deciding whether the disbelief in her tone is genuine or not. He also has a hard time figuring out whether the slight disappointment he almost thinks he can grasp in his hands is real or whether he is merely hearing things that aren't there. "Honestly, I was kinda scared when you picked up. After everything that went down this morning, I thought you'd ask me what I'm wearing or something after I told you I'm in bed already."

He groans. At first.

Then, he thinks, _you know what? Two can play this game_.

…and asks, before he can change his mind, "Hmm, well, what _are_ you wearing?"

Yup, he still knows which buttons to push and which buttons to leave alone to entice a reaction out of her when she is least expecting it. She apparently hadn't anticipated for him to answer to her merciless teasing at all, hadn't thought he would willingly participate in her game, because the only thing that follows first is semi-shocked silence and then a faint, almost _anxious_ giggle, oddly similar to the one that came from Toby a couple of minutes and a half ago.

"Oh. _Okay_. Um… what am I wearing…" She trails off. "Nothing special. Just my pajamas, actually." She clears her throat before mumbling in a reproachful tone, "Fine. You win. Look, I know I was really mean just now but seriously… don't do that."

He quirks an eyebrow. "Do what?"

" _That_ ," she clarifies without clarifying at all, sounding noticeably flustered despite the hissing accusation. "It's annoying. Moving on."

"Moving on," Toby echoes with a grin that lures a snort out of her. "Let's move on then. How's the health care business? Should we be worried?"

Spencer sighs. "Well, some of my coworkers should. Apparently, we're laying off over thirty people in the next month and since I'm responsible for external _and_ internal communication processes, I'm the one who has to make sure that nobody finds out until it's time," she explains warily. "Which is, y'know, pretty awesome. Doesn't make me feel guilty or anything."

"Um," he begins and furrows his brow. "You just blatantly told me that HR is planning on firing over thirty people. How's that 'overseeing external communication processes' again?"

"I trust you," she simply says. "And besides, you have to be, like, a grade A sociopath to work in HR, anyway. Seriously. Forget lawyers and politicians. The real evil is a woman called Linda, works in Human Resources and has a 'Live, Laugh, Love' tattoo on her right wrist. They can handle some of their dirty secrets getting out."

"Hm. Does that mean you changed your mind about going into HR?"

"For now, yeah. Maybe I just need to toughen up. You know, like _Linda_ informed me," Spencer replies, and Toby can picture her eye-roll. "What about you? Are they paying you for helping with the bar?" When he remains unresponsive against her question, merely dropping his eyes to stare at his colorful socks, she promptly huffs into the phone so loudly that he winces by pure instinct. "Are you kidding? You're joking, right? You're _in school_. This isn't a hobby for you, Toby. It's literally _your life_. The least they could do is—I mean, you _work_ as a carpenter and-"

"Spence, hey, whoa. Calm down," he interrupts her gently, a minor fraction of him nevertheless flattered. "I work as a carpenter, yeah, but it did start out as a hobby. I genuinely like building things and I genuinely like fixing things too. And I genuinely enjoy helping people. Plus, I get free food and Em's friends are funny. It's really not that bad."

Spencer lets that sit for a few beats, then makes a rather unimpressed and unamused sound in the back of her throat. "I still think you shouldn't be doing it for free."

Apparently, or perhaps conveniently, he doesn't know, she has forgotten about three weeks ago where she had called him over after work to _please_ have a look at her window, and her kitchen counter, and her 'stupid IKEA desk', and then, _sorry, but since you're here, do you know why my closet door keeps doing this weird thing_ , so he decides to forget about it as well.

"Well, maybe." He shrugs one shoulder. "Cody did try to help me out a little though."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know." Toby hesitates and has no idea why. Well – yes, that _is_ a lie again, but he isn't in the mood to own up to his bullshit, so he shoves it away. "She told me about her brother who has his own architect firm and she said she could help me get an internship there? That was nice of her."

"I'll say," Spencer remarks. "You're gonna do it, right?"

He frowns. "Uh… no? There's plenty of architect firms in Boston."

"What's so great about Boston?"

"Uh – what's so great about New York?"

" _What's so great about New_ —" Her answer gives way to a groan. "It's fucking New York."

"Why the hell does everyone keep saying that," Toby mumbles tiredly. "Honestly, I didn't really expect that kind of reaction from a Chicago-"

"Obviously, Chicago is superior to New York in virtually every single way," she cuts in sharply, not letting him finish his observation. Toby smirks. "But New York's better than Boston. Why didn't you tell me? We can work on your resume together when you're back."

He kicks at the floor with an eye-roll, and wonders, half-joking and yet half-not, "Why exactly do you wanna get rid of me so badly?"

That quiets her for a solid ten seconds. "I don't wanna 'get rid of you'," she assures him. "Come on, we could still see each other. It's not _that_ far."

"Yeah, you're right. It's 'only' 180 miles."

She sounds taken aback when she asks, "You looked it up?"

"I looked it up."

Judging by Spencer immediately falling silent once more, that was seemingly not only complete bad timing, but also the wrong thing to confess to her in passing because she merely clears her throat soundly, ignores his answer, and proceeds to continue her gentle persuasion in the same cheerful voice from right before. Toby squeezes his eyes shut.

"It's New York, Toby. Great economy and, uh… great… design… culture?"

"Lots of _great_ competition too," he comments dryly. "Plus, did you know that Massachusetts pays a higher mean salary to architects than New York?"

"Okay… but nobody's saying that you have to stay there after you're done with your three years of internship. It's just gonna look good on your resume. You can move to… what's the highest? Texas?"

"Houston has no zoning code so that's cool as an architect but no, highest is Georgia."

"See. You can still move to Georgia after."

He blinks. "Okay, now I'm _definitely_ convinced that you're trying to get rid of me."

"Ugh." On the other end of the line, he can hear her mattress squeak in exhaustion as if she just sat up in bed, frustrated with him for not seeing and understanding the point she has been trying to make. "I _swear_ I'm not. I just want you to keep your options open instead of refusing an opportunity that was handed to you on a silver platter. This is your _future_ we're talking about, Toby. My resume was pathetic after I left Rosewood. I still don't know how I even got this job besides a lot of luck."

" _Options_ ," he repeats blankly as he rubs the fatigue out of his eyes. "Fine, but I don't care about 'keeping my options' open and I don't care about New York either. It's not like there aren't any internships left in Boston or… or… or literally _anywhere_ nearby."

Spencer groans, then inhales and exhales greedily after there is a weak 'click' sound of what he presumes is her lighter. "Why do you keep doing this, Toby? Why do you keep… accepting the bare minimum of comfort and happiness for yourself? First Rosewood and then – then the cop thing and… and… and _Yvonne_ … and now renovating an entire fucking bar for free." Her voice grows increasingly louder by the second, becomes increasingly more exasperated, and he feels increasingly more like eighteen or perhaps nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, again. "I don't wanna be an asshole. I realize that I sound like one right now, but I really don't. I just… you deserve so much more. Please do me a favor and _think_ about it before rejecting Cody's offer. It sounds amazing."

"And I appreciate that. I appreciate _you_. But I also wish you would, just once, accept what I-"

"You're right. You're _so_ right. I'm doing it again. I'm so sorry-"

"No," Toby protests weakly, dropping his eyes, dropping his voice, dropping his pretenses, and nonchalantly dropping every single promise he had first made to himself and then made to her too. "Do you know what I want? I want stability after the last few years. And I – I wanna grow up and figure out what I actually want from my life and… I wanna stay. For the first time in my life, I wanna stay. In Boston. I'm not sure about a lot of things right now, okay, but there's one thing I do know. One thing I am sure of. And that's you. I don't wanna be away from you again."

And that's all there is to it, isn't it? _All roads lead to Rome_. It's not New York that would make him happiest. It's not Boston. It's – it's her. It's all her. It's finding bobby pins and hair ties all over his apartment after she is long gone and picking them up with a smile he can't control. It's being violently pulled out of his sleep in the middle of the night because he has yet again made the mistake of not putting his phone on silent and it's blatantly lying to her when she asks if she woke him up because he doesn't want her to feel guilty. It's intently listening to her ramble on and on about a parking ticket she allegedly didn't deserve and then watching her dig her spoon into his food without preamble. It's his shirt and pants and socks smelling like cigarette smoke and it's him suspecting that her stuff doesn't break nearly as often as she claims and not calling her out on it because he enjoys having a good enough excuse to drive to Worcester. It's missing her when she is out of town and counting down the days until she is back. It's hugging her hello and hugging her goodbye and feeling like… feeling like the world only makes sense inside the sanctuary of her arms.

The seconds feel like hours, feel like days, feel like weeks, but before he can attempt to rewind and take back what he doesn't regret, there is a gentle knock at the door. "Tobes? Food's there."

"Yeah. I'll be there in a second," he tells Emily, then adds, to Spencer this time, "Well, uh, the food's here now."

"Oh. Okay."

_Oh. Okay_ , and that's it. Again, Toby squeezes his eyes shut, feeling like a fucking idiot. "Well… uh… I'm – I'm really sorry for saying that."

"No. Please. Don't be. I'm sorry for-"

"You don't have to apologize for anything. Heh." He gets up from the edge of the bathtub and blinks at his reflection in the mirror. "I'm… I really didn't mean it in a weird way. I meant it…"

"As friends?" she proposes when he trails off. She sounds strange and completely un-Spencer-like, but he figures that he doesn't sound like himself either, so he gives a shrug and ignores it.

"Yeah. Yeah, as friends," he lies and forces himself to a laugh. Relief spreads in his bones when she starts laughing as well.

"Okay," she replies. Once more, it's that strange tone, complete with an even stranger noise that sounds like a mixture between nervous chuckle and hum. "Well, uh… enjoy your food?"

"Thanks. Goodnight."

"You too."

With a snort, Toby puts his phone into the pocket of his sweatpants and exists the bathroom.

* * *

In late February, Spencer has no choice but to reluctantly accept her first diagnosis as an adult – it's 'moderate to severe depression' and she furrows her brow somewhat and wonders, _which one is it? Moderate or severe?_ – and is consequently prescribed Celexa in addition to her weekly psychotherapy sessions. Dr. Mizrahi promises that her irregular sleeping patterns will improve now, normalize even, if she is willing to give it some time, but the only thing stupid Celexa does in the first two weeks or so is keep her up pretty much all night instead of rightfully knock her out. In other words: no change here, nothing to see, same business as usual. Her lost appetite, though, returns during the third week with her new roommate and return it does in full fucking force. She doesn't recall ever eating this much her whole life. Poking at the skin of her stomach, she asks herself whether that's a good thing. Then she shrugs, deciding that it doesn't matter, lies down on her sofa, opens a bag of chips and begins browsing Hulu.

Another not-so-pleasant side effect?

"Nope, I was never prescribed Celexa," Aria says on the phone one Sunday morning as Spencer goes on her hourly march to her fridge. _This_ , her inner voice tells her in a grim tone, _this is the true walk of shame_. Wiping her hand on her shirt, she peeks inside to check for leftovers. "I think Hanna took Celexa for a while and she claimed it gave her a dry mouth? And she had to pee all the time. I'm not sure if I'm remembering right though. Maybe she was on Zoloft…?"

"Mhm," Spencer responds, already blushing a touch. "Was there anything else? Something… worth mentioning?"

Aria pauses. "What do you mean?"

"Um…" Chewing the inside of her cheek with vigor, the other brunette grabs a somewhat clean fork from the sink and struggles with the Tupperware container on her counter. "You know, like, uh… sex-wise?"

" _Ohh_." Aria immediately emits a barking laugh; Spencer can't say she feels the same. Not even in the slightest. "Yeah. Sorry to tell you but that's a common side effect of pretty much every single antidepressant on the market. It happens. It should get better eventually."

Here's the ugly truth, though, if Spencer has to be honest: for a while, nothing gets better. For a while, it just gets worse.

But that too is apparently a part of recovery nobody bothered to warn Spencer about. Therapy, sadly, isn't some magical space that will get rid of her demons under her bed in exchange for a few lousy memories of Melissa threatening to choke her for touching her stuff. Instead, it's an excruciatingly slow and painful process that mostly consists of digging, digging, and digging some more into the past, only to breathe in some relief, only to collect a couple of loose-fitting band-aids to help her survive the week until the next session, and then retraumatize her all over again. She stops mid-bite and chuckles. _Trauma_ , she muses quietly as she sinks her teeth into her thumbnail. _Greek word for wound. How fitting_. That's what it feels like too; wounds _every-fucking-where_. Old ones that have all but healed. Those she had forgotten about because one day, they simply stopped hurting unless she touched them first and Spencer, though always the fool and always the impulsive, self-destructive idiot, knows better than to pick at scars and send herself spiraling for no good reason. And then, of course, new ones inflicted through much too belated realizations that some of the things done to her were maybe, sort of, _kind of_ fucked up.

She wants to drink sometimes, finally drink her thoughts into both submission and silence; drive home after therapy, take some NyQuil and sleep until next month. God, she really misses sleep more than anything else. And every now and then, typically after yet another sessions drifts into manic ramblings about Charlotte and the dollhouse and Mona and the dollhouse and her parents and the dollhouse and Melissa and the dollhouse and finding Toby's body in the woods and the dollhouse, Spencer comes home and stares at the stranger wearing her face in the mirror, can't help but exhale a miserable groan, because here she is, right, with a bunch of prescription drugs at hand and _theoretically_ _speaking_ , it's a dream come true. Though she later finds that she had clearly underestimated Dr. Mizrahi's skills in that regard; the doctor was seemingly smart and attentive enough not to readily grant her client access to pills that would get her high. But again, it's just _theoretically speaking_ , anyway – not that Spencer would ever try it (needless to say, she totally does, and instead of getting high, she ends up feeling so nauseous that she doesn't make it to the bathroom. _Once a pathetic addict, always a pathetic addict_ , she thinks and snorts and cries and wallows in some more self-pity). On other occasions, when there is no apparent trigger in sight, but the world still becomes too heavy to bear, she has to tell her brain to shut up and resist the urge to sign back up on Tinder, upload some pictures that leave next to no room for questions and make it crystal clear what it is that she is looking for. And if she has to be honest again, the only reason she is able to tackle that need from behind and suffocate it gently after a solid ten minutes of internally debating herself, is because even the mere thought of sex sounds kind of appalling right now. Thank god for Celexa, huh?

To put it another way: she is a goddamn mess. On those days though – those days she eloquently dubs _bad days_ ; those days where therapy feels like running a marathon without a finishing line anywhere close; those days where all that Dr. Mizrahi succeeds in is making Spencer bawl her eyes out over her youth lost to a woman's sick games; those days where she regrets listening to her friend's advice; those days where she desperately wishes she could take back her decision to start therapy in the first place because she was doing _great_ before she had come here, wasn't she, she was happy and relatively stable and not like… not like _this_. On those days, more often than not, she ends up on Toby's doorstep in Boston, temple resting against the frame and tossing him a weak smile when he takes in her equally weak appearance and then steps aside to let her in.

_This must be some form of therapy too_ , Spencer comments as she plops down on his sofa one Tuesday in March. Because it's comfort, it's relief, it's freedom, the knowledge that he won't push her into opening up, that he won't ask invasive questions like Aria would unless Spencer announces that she wants to talk about it after all. _It's safety_ , she adds, then, eyes following him as he walks to the kitchen after he drapes his quilt over her shoulders carefully.

"How was therapy?" Toby wonders. Always so noncommitted, too, as though he wants to sound as casual as humanly possible, as though he has to make sure she is aware that she doesn't have to say anything at all if she doesn't feel like it. He swiftly returns to the sofa with two mugs and an ashtray she knows he only owns because of her – a frankly irrelevant detail that, for whatever reason, instantaneously fills her with a burst of warmth and gratitude. As nice and selfless of a gesture it is, however, she doesn't particularly enjoy tainting non-smoker apartments with her vices, so she leaves her _Lucky's_ undisturbed right where they are, inside her brown bag, though she _does_ take out her notebook and sort of chucks it onto the coffee table with a sarcastic snort.

"She gave me homework."

"Homework?"

"Homework," Spencer confirms dryly and takes a small sip from her tea. "Dr. Mizrahi's under the impression that I 'don't think very highly of myself'. Which isn't exactly a secret that I've been trying to keep from her. I could've told her that ages ago. In fact, I'm pretty sure I _did_ tell her that during our first or second session. You don't need a Harvard degree to figure out that I tend to have immense self-esteem issues. You just need to spend about five minutes with me."

Undeniably curious, his eyes land on the notebook resting on the coffee table before them. Then he hums and gazes back at Spencer with a blank expression. She quickly nods and as he reaches for it, she adds, sipping at her mug again, "I mean, I got fucking cheated on and then practically _begged_ him to love me back, anyway. Because that's how much self-worth I have left. Zero."

With the notebook in his lap now, Toby abruptly halts in his movements. Spencer winces, lowers the mug and does the same. "Sorry. Terrible joke. I really need to stop bringing that up."

"It's not that. I'm just genuinely sorry that happened to you," he says, and the worst part is that she believes every word. "I don't want you to feel like you have to silence yourself around me or like you can't… like you can't talk about Caleb with me. I talk about Yvonne sometimes."

Something inside her twitches at the unexpected mention of Yvonne's name. She pulls another grimace, guilty this time, and takes another sip to torture it back into quiet with burning hot tea.

"So," he cautiously speaks up after she remains unresponsive to his offer. She looks back up in time to catch the soft, hesitant smile he is sending her way. "What's for homework?"

"Well, she wants me to write down stuff that I 'like about myself'," Spencer explains and rolls her eyes, though also eternally thankful for the change of topic. "I don't remember if I ever told you, but we attempted to do this exercise in group therapy while I was stuck in rehab. And I'm calling it an 'attempt' because the doctor wasn't too happy with me when the only thing I came up with was, 'I'm good at tricking my GP into giving me an ADHD diagnosis so that I can score more prescription pills'."

She can tell that he is trying his hardest not to, but an amused chuckle at her story escapes his lips anyhow. "See, that's what you should write down. _Unique sense of humor_ ," he comments and flips the notebook open. "Wait. That's… that's all you got so far?"

Spencer shrugs. "I told you, it's not that easy. I bet you couldn't come up with anything either."

"It just says 'I'm smart'."

"I _am_ smart."

"You are," he agrees and checks the second, third, fourth pages, like he is convinced that there has to be more. "That's not exactly your whole personality though."

"Yeah… I couldn't really write down the rest without sounding like a huge egomaniac."

"She's your therapist, Spence. She isn't allowed to judge."

"Not professionally, no. But I would _definitely_ judge myself if I were her and someone came to my office and claimed that they're extremely competitive and the best at everything they do-"

"Except _Scrabble_ ," he mumbles under his breath, returning to the first page again.

Immediately, she shoots him a look that first turns into a scoff and then, at last, a furious scowl when she realizes that he is holding a pencil. "What are you doing? Are seriously writing down what I just said?"

" _I like challenge. I'm a fast learner_ ," he reads. "There. Does that sound better?"

Pensive for a few, she puts her mug on the table and proceeds to stretch before half-lying down on the sofa, her legs behind him. "It sounds like you're transcribing a shitty job interview."

"Hmm…" Gaze glued to the notebook still, Toby rubs at his chin, semi-contemplative. "Maybe I should add 'I'm very nitpicky for no reason' to the list. What do you think?"

Seemingly having expected a reaction to that, he leans out of reach when she unceremoniously attempts to lightly shove at the back of his head with her foot. "Add 'I must be a fucking saint because I've been patiently dealing with Toby Cavanaugh's bullshit for close to ten years'."

Turning his head to glance at her, the corners of his mouth twitching into a blink-and-you'll-miss it kind of grin, he pats her ankle. "It's your homework. What do you like about yourself?"

"I don't know," she confesses. "I guess I, uh… I…"

_4.) I don't give up easily._

Weeks and weeks fly by like nothing and Celexa, too, gets over her bashfulness and instead lets Spencer in on her apparent magic powers. A fraction of Spencer, however, is immensely plagued by unfounded paranoia nevertheless. _This has to be the placebo effect_ , she reasons. There is no way in hell that her mood would improve so suddenly and so damn rapidly. But during their Skype conversation, her mom furrows her brow as though she doesn't recognize the woman posing as her youngest daughter, and Melissa walks over from the kitchen with a bottle of Evian water and remarks, sounding all but reproachful, "What's going on? You're awfully chipper for a Monday," and that's when she realizes: she is. She actually is.

_5.) I fall often but I always come back again._

A couple of days later, Mona uploads a picture of herself at the beach in Egypt or it's possibly Tunisia or maybe Morocco, Spencer has no idea, as she sips on a colorful cocktail with her beau of the week, a grinning, brown-eyed beauty who looks like Mona somehow managed to cut him straight out of an underwear catalogue. Spencer is on lunch break and in the middle of devouring her food while catching up on her Instagram feed when she sees the other woman's update. She shrugs, sincerely unaffected, likes her post and comments a simple 'Looking good!' underneath Hanna's eight consecutive heart emojis, all in different shades.

_6.) I can be awfully optimistic for a cynical asshole._

She visits Aria and Ezra at least twice a week after work and it's one Thursday evening that she is left by herself with the smallest Fitz. Ezra is folding laundry upstairs, Aria is talking with her publisher, and Spencer is engrossed in her phone. Oscar's half-yell is what causes her to glance up and, realizing that Aria has wandered off to the kitchen, Spencer's veins abruptly get flooded by a surge of uneasiness. She pulls a face as she eyes the baby, jumping, falling headfirst into a soundless mantra of ' _Please don't kill yourself while I'm watching you, please don't kill yourself while I'm watching you'_ but Oscar is having none of that. He just gurgles, begins half-crawling, half-dragging his tiny body over to his aunt with stubborn conviction – and then, having finally reached his journey's end, goes on to release a chuckle in the back of his throat.

Spencer stares at him and blinks. "Did you seriously just-"

Oscar blows a spit bubble.

"Oh my god." Carefully, she strokes over his chubby hand on her outstretched legs, a dramatic gasp involuntarily escaping her when he grabs at her thumb.

She _is_ his godmother, but she is a fucking miserable one too. Never before had she managed to make him laugh. Or smile. Or do anything _but_ frown at her in distress, really. He is quite in love with Emily, sends her an adorable grin that is mostly drool when she is close; gets quiet, snuggly and extraordinarily peaceful when Alison picks him up to rock him gently in her arms; doesn't complain much whenever Hanna buys him clothes and changes his outfit for the sixth or seventh time in a row so that she can take pictures of him for her Instagram. But Spencer? Spencer, he only begrudgingly tolerates as an impromptu babysitter. She had missed most of his milestones so far – literally by seconds. It's like he could smell her irrational fear of babies off her.

" _Oh my god_."

Aria peeks into the living room. "What's going on?"

Spencer looks at her friend, still flabbergasted. "He just… he just crawled to me."

That earns her the eyebrow. "Sure he did," Aria replies, ignoring Spencer's mumble of protest. "He doesn't know how to crawl, Spence. I bet he somehow… rolled closer to you. He does that sometimes."

"No, he literally-"

Holding up her index finger to shush her friend, Aria shakes her head, directs her attention back to the phone call, says, "James? Yeah, hi, it's Aria Fitz," and disappears in the kitchen.

Spencer stares at Oscar.

Oscar stares back at her.

"So… you do realize you have to do that again when your parents are back, right?" she informs him in a serious voice. "They're gonna think I made it up if you don't."

Oscar giggles.

Unwillingly, her lips pull into a smile of their own. "You think that's funny, huh? Well, tell you what— _oh_." Spencer trails off when he hits her thigh with both of his hands, all while producing a little happy sound that is somewhere between excited squeak and ear-piercing yell. "Oh, you wanna be picked up? Okay, we can do that just—be patient with me. You know that I don't pick you up a lot and, by the way, I hate when you start fussing and I feel like I'm going to drop you. So I'd appreciate if you didn't do that for once."

Cautiously, and a lot more slowly than Aria does, with her heart beating inside her throat, inside her ears, inside her head, Spencer gets up from the floor with baby Oscar in her arms, sits down in the armchair instead, hugs him to her chest, sniffs at his hair, kisses the top of his head… and for one second, just for one fleeting second that she knows she will passionately deny later on, she thinks, _well… maybe one day. Maybe one day._

_[crossed out multiple times] 7.) I'm really not as judgmental as people make me out to be._

Over the first April weekend, she is sent on another business trip. Fortunately, it's Philadelphia this time and unfortunately, Melissa is in town and insists they fetch brunch together. Anything involving food sounds like a promising idea to Spencer, Celexa _still_ mercilessly stimulating her endless appetite, so she foolishly agrees to her sister's invitation. It goes well enough until, six mimosas and twenty minutes of painfully polite small talk in, Melissa abruptly breaks down in bitter and quite drunken tears over Wren and an ER doctor she describes as 'blonde bimbo' with the 'IQ of boiled cabbage'. Raising her eyebrows slightly, Spencer lets that sink in as she nurses her drink, tries hard to keep her disgusted reaction at bay (and, naturally, _fails_ ) before she clears her throat and wonders whether they are back together _again_. The older woman wipes her nose dramatically and then waves her hand, claims that 'it's complicated' and that Spencer 'wouldn't understand anyway' (and Spencer thinks of Toby, thinks of Toby, thinks of Toby).

Upon somehow learning that she is visiting – come to think about it, however, it's her Instagram post showing Independence Hall in its glory that gave her away, with Hanna, as usual, helpfully supplying ten additional hashtags in the comments – Alison asks if she wants to hang out later that same day and Spencer – Spencer feels an all-consuming pang of loneliness and maybe foul-tasting _envy_ that she can't just swallow without also choking on her gloom when she spots the second toothbrush resting against Ali's in the upstairs bathroom. She is too wise to probe further so she keeps mute at her discovery, deals with her thoughts of resentment on her own.

"Honestly," she begins after dinner, loading their plates into the dishwasher. "I'm still waiting for you to pick a fight with me."

Alison isn't amused. She gives her a look. "And why the hell would I do that, Spencer?"

"Well, I don't know," Spencer responds in an offhand tone, not willing to meet her eyes. "Last year, Aria basically bitched at me in my car for allegedly ghosting on her. Hanna… sort of the did the same a few months ago. And knowing Emily, she's _so_ close to exploding and when she finally does, she's going to start yelling too. Logical conclusion tells me you're next in line."

"Oh, sweetie," Alison chides in _that_ irritating voice and giggles as if infamous Ali D had come out of hibernation the moment the brunette was stupid enough to set foot in Rosewood again. Spencer instinctively rolls her eyes as the blonde touches the bag of popcorn in her microwave to check its temperature before she takes it out and empties its contents into a bowl. "Is that what this is about? I _literally_ invented ghosting on people, Spencer. I don't care. Do what you have to do for self-preservation."

Huh.

_[crossed out multiple times] 7.) Despite everything, I still love._

It's mid-April and on the morning of her 26th birthday, like on cue and exactly like the previous year (and the year before that and the year before _that_ ), with no change in tone, text, or time of the day, Emily cheerfully writes, _Happy Birthday, Spence! I hope it's a good one!_ but this time, Spencer decides that things are going to be a little different from now on. This time, she simply reads through Emily's message (again and again and again), blinking away her rushed tears of surprise, inhales a sharp breath to regain her calm, and types, _Thank you, Em. Let me know when you're in town. We should have coffee sometime_. As expected, though, Emily is thrown straight off-balance; it takes her two hours and then some to react at all, and Spencer can't help but think of her, picture her sitting there, overcome by confusion, raising an eyebrow at the phone in her grasp, but when she finally responds, it's two heart emojis, accompanied by, _Yeah, I'd like that_ , and Spencer thinks, with a bittersweet smile, that she would definitely like that too.

And then… well, and then there is Hanna who calls her at midnight, texts her again at eight in the morning as Spencer is downing her first coffee of the day and posts a quite beautiful collage with numerous pictures of them on her Instagram, a 600-word caption summarizing the entirety of their friendship – without the ugly details, of course – and her gratitude for the other woman right underneath. In other words: she is vigorously overcompensating. Spencer _knows_ full well that she is overcompensating for everything that had happened between them when it shouldn't and everything both women had chosen not to do when they could have. Seemingly, she is not entirely alone in her suspicions either. The collage has been up for all but twenty minutes or so when Aria takes a screenshot of Hanna's post and proceeds to send it to Spencer with four very confused question marks while Alison calls her to wish her a happy birthday and then asks, as though it's a mere afterthought and yet Spencer can tell from her tone that she is dying to know, whether Hanna is okay.

But once again, Spencer just inhales, shrugs it off, tells herself to move on, tells herself that it doesn't matter – tells herself to ignore the fact that Caleb had the fucking audacity to like his _fiancée's_ post for his _ex-girlfriend_ – tells herself to grow, grow, grow, leave the past behind and learn to let go. She allows herself to feel touched then, to feel beyond moved, because honestly, all those pesky feelings of old hurt and grudges aside, she _is_. A happy smile forms on her mouth as she gazes at the photographs in Hanna's collage, as she remembers, gets lost in how life used to be, and while there indeed had been a time where all that she ever wanted was a do-over, a second chance, a rewrite, it's in these quiet moments where Past Hanna and Past Spencer are giggling away on a selfie before the word selfie existed, that she reaches an overdue epiphany: she doesn't want that anymore. This is the world, this is her life now – a scary observation when spoken out loud, when _thought_ about, yes, but it doesn't terrify her anymore like it used to last year or the year before that or the year before _that_.

But speaking of moving on and embracing life as the horrible stand-up comedian it oftentimes tends to be, her heart, a world-class hypocrite if she may add, doesn't at all think it's necessary to extend the same notion to certain other topics.

Toby calls her while she is inspecting a strand of gray hair with a look of horror gradually taking over her features – "We should do something special tonight. You don't turn twenty-six every day," he half-yawns on the other line. She emits an amused laugh against her will and responds, "It's _just_ twenty-six, Toby. Every birthday after you survive early adulthood becomes more or less pointless, anyway." – she scrunches up her face in sheer disgust, rips it out without further ado and makes a mental note to call her hairdresser as soon as possible while he soundly clears his throat and tells her that he wants to go out for dinner – "Uh, well, if semantics are important here, it's actually… _taking_ you out? I mean, I'm paying. It's _your_ birthday," he says, confident despite most of his sentence flowing, running and then taking refuge in a tired mutter; _way_ more confident than Spencer too who is merely standing there, mouth agape, gray hair slipping from her grasp and into the sink, clever retort slipping from her lips and back down her throat.

Yeah… it's a date, right? Getting drinks together, having dinner at a fancy restaurant, spending time dressed up like they are kids playing house – it's _totally_ a date, only it _totally_ isn't. Because they aren't calling it a date (aren't ready to call it one), and, like Toby had eloquently put when Spencer's voice failed and betrayed her, semantics can be important in the grand scheme of things, and if they refuse to call it a date, then it can't be one either. If they don't call it flirting, then their constant back-and-forth banter is anything but. And if they don't call it lov—if they don't call it desire or lust or affection, _something_ , then it's an innocent friendship in spite of old feelings, memories, dreams, hopes, fantasies lingering on and on and…

Groaning, _growling_ , she buries her face in her hands. "God… get over it."

Much later, he arrives to pick her up for their non-date. He had insisted, stubborn as he is, even though she told him, numerous times too, that she could easily drive to the restaurant. Problem is: she isn't even halfway done. Her nail polish isn't dry, her dress unzipped, her jewelry waiting for her on the kitchen counter, and Aria hadn't been very helpful when Spencer snapped pictures of her shoe choices and sent them to her friend. She startles at the unexpected knock at the door and peeks at her watch in panic.

" _Shit_." She puts out her cigarette and hastily finishes the rest of her wine before picking up the now empty glass, scurrying off to the kitchen and yelling, over her shoulder, "I'll be right there!"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." Reaching behind her, panic close to reaching a bittersweet crescendo, Spencer zips up her black dress in a hurry. _This is what I get_ , she thinks, makes an irritated face, and spins around in front of the mirror to check for nail polish residue on her back, _for refusing to date for over an entire year_. This is what she gets even for most of her so-called dates _before_ Elias, man-child of the century, and the marvelous – read: idiotic – decision to _abstain_ , typically consisting of 'hanging out' in some guy's stuffy bedroom, tragic hipster beard and bun tickling the skin of her cheek in the most repulsive way, and watching _Game of Thrones_ on his 11-inch MacBook before bony hands inevitably went on a pilgrimage to the Holy City he claimed to have found between her legs. She isn't good at this anymore. She purses her lips, stares down her own nervous-looking reflection. God, she has never been particularly good at this, has she? Good at attracting men? Maybe. Good at attracting the worst of the worst who would somehow manage to come up with new ways to interpret her obvious discomfort as attraction and burning chemistry? Probably. Good at going on _actual_ dates? Again, she makes an irritated, little face.

And again, Toby knocks. "Spence…? Is everything okay?"

"Uh-huh," she calls, earrings in one hand, pair of shoes in the other as she kicks the rest of them back into the closet and then kicks the door shut as well. "Just… give me a few minutes."

Still cursing, Spencer dashes across the apartment to her bedroom in order to take her bag from the chair by her vanity, applies her favorite perfume – on her pulse points; behind ears and knees, throat, wrists, and, feeling especially daring and then especially _stupid_ , only to go back to feeling daring _enough_ , her inner thighs as well – gets her coat from her bed and makes a run for the bathroom to have one last scrutinizing look at both her hair and make-up, to rummage through the medicine cabinet for a solid twenty seconds before, at last, finding her birth control she had thrown there yesterday. Inspecting the pill, Spencer raises an eyebrow, wonders quietly, "What the hell am I even still taking this for," and swallows it swiftly with tap water anyhow.

Finally, she opens the door, out of breath and slightly sweaty, and can't help but giggle, although she _is_ aware that she probably shouldn't, once she spots Toby there with his arms resting on the wooden railing as he gazes out at her neighborhood, his boredom palpable even in the shadows.

"I'm sorry. I completely lost track of time. My parents sent me this… this toy as a birthday gift? And I played with it pretty much all afternoon," she says, tumbling over her rushed words, and smiles at him instantly drawing her into a big, crushing hug – at the feel of him inhaling at her neck softly, taking in her scent. Her stomach reacts by going fuzzy. "Honestly, I didn't think I'd have much use for it at first but look at this, it's awesome. This is everything I was promised by 90s movies about the future – Alexa, turn off the music."

" _Okay. I'll turn off the music_."

The playlist she had put on earlier falls silent.

They break apart somewhat and she stares up at him, grinning wide and hands still holding onto his arms in a maybe-appropriate-but-probably-not type of gesture, as childish excitement grows in her voice and she is certain on her face as well when she adds, "It's a kid's toy. I love it."

"Welcome to the future," Toby teases, looking down at her – _checking her out_ , she remarks and tries to keep her giddiness tranquil and far, far away. "Happy birthday. You look amazing."

"Thank you." She rises on her tiptoes to brush her mouth against his cheek in a little kiss, gently wipes her lipstick off of him after and pats his chest. "You look pretty handsome yourself."

He quirks an eyebrow at her. "Pretty?"

She chuckles. He looks pleased with himself. " _Very_ handsome," she states, nodding and playing with his jacket. "Where are we going? You didn't tell me."

"Uh, well, I don't know any restaurants in Worcester, but you mentioned this Lebanese place a while ago? So I ended up making reservations there. I hope that's okay with you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure, that's more than okay. The food's great. You'll like it," she replies, throwing an ' _Alexa, turn off all lights'_ over her shoulder and then throwing a happy grin Toby's way too who shakes his head, amused. As she is closing and locking the apartment door behind her, she adds, "Wow. I can't believe you remembered. I mentioned it maybe once in passing."

He shrugs, nonchalant. "I tend to _listen_ to you when you talk, you know. That's nothing special."

He is wrong, though; it _is_ special. At least it is special to her. They drive to the restaurant in his car, talking about this and that on their way; work, naturally, and school, the upcoming elections in November, a couple of _very_ mean jokes and shared laughs at Siri's expense because she keeps forcing them to take unnecessary detours instead of the many shortcuts Spencer helpfully points out to her. As they stop at another red light downtown and Toby lowers his eyes from the road to fiddle with the car radio, Spencer risks a sideway glance at this profile, with a soft smile and an even softer kind of happiness scattering inside her, and she thinks, it's crazy, how much life can change within one year. On her 25th birthday, right around this time in fact, she had been in Chicago, drunk on wine, stuffing her face with laddus and persistently stewing over Hanna and Caleb and Emily and silly, trivial things that, in the end, didn't matter much. And now, one year later, she is here, and frankly, nothing has remained the same – but that doesn't mean everything changed for the worse either.

Toby parks the car and inside, the waiter politely informs them at their table isn't ready yet. He suggests they go have some drinks at the bar while they wait, then turns abruptly to tend to the other guests that have arrived before Toby can speak what his face is already saying. Toby sighs in defeat and pulls a grimace, stumbling over one, two, three apologies, but Spencer squeezes his arm affectionately and mumbles, "Don't apologize. We'll wait. Besides, wouldn't be my birthday if everything went like it's supposed to."

One cocktail quickly becomes two and the fuzziness inside her stomach quickly becomes a low, familiar tug that twists and twitches inside her like a sharp knife. Granted, it _is_ a quiet and rather subsided version of what she is typically used to, but still more – much more vibrant and much more overwhelming – than anything Celexa has allowed her to experience in months. Clearing her throat and then biting her tongue, Spencer feels brave… _enough_ to sneak in another sideway glance at Toby when he pushes the small bowl of peanuts in her direction, commenting it with a simple yet incredibly tender, "Here. Eat something."

"I _am_ ," she assures him and proceeds to take a handful.

Apparently, though, she isn't even remotely subtle about her staring habits anymore, the wine and the cocktails certainly not helping, because he notices and frowns. "What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she responds, shaking her head and directing her attention to her drink. She uses her straw to stir it casually. "I like this evening so far. Thank you."

Once again, he wrinkles his nose, seemingly mistaken her semi-nervous tone for sarcasm. "I'm really sorry they messed up our reservation. I called _days_ ago. I didn't think this would happen."

"No, don't be. I meant it. I really, really like my birthday so far."

With a small, thoughtful hum, he drops his gaze into his lap and smiles to himself, then glimpses back up at her as she takes another tentative sip from her cocktail. "I like your birthday too. I'm really glad you were born."

Truthfully, the cheesiness of his admission be damned, that _does_ touch her, softens her expression, softens her heart too, but truthfully, she has no idea how to respond. Whether to open herself to his prying eyes further, make herself even more vulnerable and exposed than she is by lov—craving him so deeply and so irrationally from afar. So, instead, she throws back her head and emits a throaty laugh. " _Okay_. Okay, I'll admit, that was very sweet but, uh, maybe deciding to drink while we're both hungry as hell wasn't… the best idea we've had."

He pulls up his mouth into a half-smirk and echoes in an earnest voice, "I meant it though."

She rests her head against his shoulder, enjoys his proximity, his cologne, his warmth. "I know."

Like she had made sure to remark, however, her birthday wouldn't be _her_ birthday if something hilariously wrong _didn't_ happen along the way. After thirty minutes, two cocktails and eighteen shared eye-rolls, they finally receive a table, but _their_ table isn't really the table either of them had been expecting. Corny rose petals, a few sweet-scented candles, dark red placement made of silk that seem quite pleasing to the eye against the white tablecloth underneath and yet don't look anything like the other tables to their left and right. Confused, Spencer momentarily draws her eyebrows together, then shrugs it off, assuming that it must be a well-meant attempt to make up for the endless delay. She briefly gazes over her shoulder to exchange a small look with Toby who is taking this worse than her. He mumbles, sounding all but worried, "This wasn't _my_ idea."

Wordlessly, they get seated and watch the smiling, perky waitress light the candles on the table one by one. Spencer, meanwhile, having realized that this _may_ be kind of odd, is trying hard to swallow her laughter at the entire situation, at her entire _day_ , and lifts her head to throw another glance at Toby, entertained this time, but his comically widened blues don't notice her because they are entirely fixated on the waitress struggling with her lighter, as if he is anxiously waiting for her to maybe tell them that there has been a mistake and that this isn't their table after all.

"I'm so fucking sorry," Toby hisses when the waitress disappears. He hastily begins picking up the rose petals and collecting them in a small bundle by his placemat. "I don't know why they-"

Spencer interrupts him by giving in and breaking into laughter. She is surprised when he doesn't join her and puts her hand over his to stop him from ruining the table decoration. "Come on, Toby. This is hilarious."

The corners of his mouth twitch once, twice into a barely-there grin that he swiftly suppresses again before it can form fully. She feels victorious and continues snickering in amusement, not a single care in the world, even when he dryly questions, "Really? You think _this_ is hilarious?"

"Yeah. _Really_ ," she retorts in a playful tone, exhales a breath to calm down, and carefully wipes under her eyes with her napkin so as to not mess with her make-up. "This is the most hilarious thing that has happened to me in… I don't know how long. I've been wanting to come back to this restaurant for _ages_ and then we do – on my birthday – and _this_ happens. It's hilarious. I haven't laughed this hard since we got thrown out of Pizza Hut on Christmas."

He visibly relaxes at her words and creates and shoots her a grin that, combined with the two Caipirinhas from before, make her feel lightheaded and then, a split second later, embarrassed at herself too. _God, how old are you? Thirteen?_ she muses, annoyed, pursing her lips, all while Toby inspects the table decoration between them and eventually pulls her out of her thoughts gently by commenting in a low whisper, "These candles smell terrible."

Spencer leans forward in her seat and – " _Oh god_."

"Told you."

"Maybe they were just looking out for us though," she remarks and picks up the menu. "Because I'm _so_ trying everything with garlic in it. The ride home's going to be so much fun for you."

He gives a laugh as he picks up the menu as well. "I'd like to see that. I always out-garlic you."

"Mhm," she makes, disgruntled, while trying to accurately pronounce _balila_ in her head. "Not this time, you won't."

"Just so you know, I'm having flashbacks to Rosewood right now," he responds casually. Still unsure if she feels like having cold or hot _meze_ first, she knits her eyebrows together and looks at him from across the table. "Don't you remember? You used to say the same thing whenever we grabbed takeout from Bucali's… and then you'd still pick the tamest dish available. Every single time."

"Uh, to my defense, I was a teenager and trying to impress my boyfriend. Lucky for me, though, I don't have to impress you anymore," she deadpans and shrugs when he chuckles. She reckons that her consequent attempt to tease him falls flat, however, because when she goes on, her tone doesn't sound nearly as confident and mischievous as she had intended it to. "Unless you were planning on making a move later, of course."

Tilting his head, he curves his eyebrows at her.

She responds by doing the same.

"Anyway," he says, stopping their unofficial staring contest and instead focusing his astonished gaze back on the menu, and then the words flow from his mouth in an uninterrupted, fast-paced sort of frenzy. "Do you wanna order a _me-zay_ platter and share? They come with bread, right? Pita, I guess? Hmm… y'know, _baba ghanoush_ sounds good. And maybe some feta cheese and _labnah_?"

And, smiling to herself as she hums in acknowledgement, her shoe accidentally or perhaps even intentionally touching his under the table, Spencer thinks that she is really enjoying twenty-six so far.

_7.) I hate this exercise._

Back in her neighborhood, they stay in his car for what feels like hours with the same childlike smiles pulling at their lips and the same tiny giggles filling the air. The radio is quietly playing some catchy tunes as they talk – talk through innocent touch, mostly, and talk through all those stolen glances and looks too – and it's late, but a selfish part of Spencer doesn't want this night to end just yet. It's perfectly irrational; they talk and text plenty, don't they, and after spinning in countless, exhaustive circles for months now, she is certain that one of them will relent and drive over sometime during the next week and they will have dinner again or opt for watching a really awful movie on Netflix or perhaps viciously yell at one another during a round of _Mario Party_. All that, of course, while skillfully denying and ignoring what is gradually growing more obvious with each passing day.

And yeah, nearly ten years of knowing him, nearly ten years of goodbyes, she doesn't want him to leave. She doesn't want him to go. She never does.

"I _did_ buy it, actually, but I haven't started reading it yet-"

"Hey," she interrupts him. "We've, uh, we've been hanging out here at least an hour. Do you want to take this upstairs, maybe?"

Toby drops the rest of his sentence – a comment about _her_ comment about some book they had both expressed interest in – and suddenly averts his eyes, like there is something in her browns that has caught him unaware and unguarded. "I would love to. I really would," he tells the wheel he is now staring at, and he sounds genuinely apologetic and remorseful and Spencer genuinely wishes she could somehow pick up and shove the words she has murmured back into her mouth and make them disappear in the dark hole that everything else she was never courageous enough to share with him calls its home. "But I, uh, I have to be at work at six tomorrow and I still have to drive back to Boston, so…"

"Oh. Okay." She nods. "Yeah. Of course."

The disappointment in her voice, though she _had_ tried to keep it down, must have been palpable after all, she thinks; maybe the regret steadily washing over her came to life on her features and shaped itself into a frown, she has no idea, but he regards her with intensity for a beat, his eyes melting, and then hurriedly adds, "I guess I can stay for an hour though."

So they make their way to her building in silence. _Comfortable_ silence but silence nevertheless and as they walk past the mailboxes, Spencer eventually has no choice but to accept her elevated heartbeat, like drums inside her ears, and from the corner of her eye, she catches a tiny glimpse, then two, of Toby's body language tensing up behind her, hands buried deep in his pocket, head lowered to watch his feet instead of her.

And still, when Ms. Li on the first floor glances at them from her kitchen window, Spencer can't help but feel caught doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing, can't help but feel _judged_ for coming home at nearly 11:20 p.m. on a Saturday night with a seemingly stranger in tow. With a sigh, she thinks back to Chicago, to running into numerous faceless, nameless neighbors on the elevator who would usually be too engrossed in their phones to notice the poorly covered hickeys where her shoulder meets her neck. She returns the woman's persistent stare and mock-confidently holds her eyes, challenging her to conclude something that isn't true, but Ms. Li merely looks away after another second or so, and Spencer's teeth sink into her bottom lip and she asks herself whether there is a possibility that she is overacting and needlessly slipping into paranoia _again_ because, maybe, in reality, it's _her_ who is wishing for stupid things that have no chance of happening. Maybe, in reality, it's _her_ whose thighs are firmly pressed together, whose thoughts are spiraling, whose body is craving his so badly, it feels like she might combust. That period of self-awareness comes and goes, like it does every time, and she buries it before it can manifest in another nervous frown on her face, in another uneasy pit inside her stomach, and instead reaches behind her to take his hand, ignoring a whole different pit opening up at the feel of his sweaty palm beneath hers.

Mr. Wilkinson on the second floor is smoking just outside his apartment, clad only in a checked fleece dressing grown, his exposed legs all but glowing in the dark. He gives the pair passing him a nod in greeting and carries on with his nightly ritual of coughing and wheezing, wheezing and coughing, and Spencer wryly thinks, _well, this is certainly romantic_ , and it's like Toby can read her thoughts, because he squeezes her hand in his, shooting her an entertained smile when she turns her head to look at him.

Stephanie from the third floor has left her door open and Spencer, who by now is more than used to this, closes it without another word, throwing a confused Toby a, "This always happens. She's 19. I have no idea how nobody's tried robbing her yet," over her shoulder as he chuckles.

And then… the fourth floor. The dreaded fourth floor.

It's on her doormat – a gift from Aria and Ezra; _Go away unless you brought wine_ , it proclaims boldly and yeah, it's dorky as hell, exactly the type of joke _those_ married couples on Facebook would laugh about before hopping into their SUV to pick up the kids from soccer practice but then again, perhaps that's what marriage and motherhood at an early age has effectively turned her friend into, she doesn't quite know – that the anxiety Spencer had stifled and burned begins running back and catches up with her in dead earnest. She cautiously peeks at Toby yet again as she unlocks the door, attempts to find any signs in his eyes, in his expression, in his slumped shoulders and the half-smile pushing and pulling at his lips; any signs, really, that would indicate as to where he thinks this is going, where he _wishes_ this was going, but she comes up empty-handed. He has closed off entirely for some reason, is shutting her out, keeping his distance and she can't read him any longer and, to be honest, her own emotions going crazy like a goddamn tornado, her own _nauseating_ desire blinding her senses aren't much of a help either.

Luckily, language returns to her once they are inside.

"No, you can keep those on," she remarks in a light tone when he crouches to take off his shoes like he always does. Meanwhile, she has to bite the inside of her cheek _hard_ to somehow keep herself from emitting an insanely loud and insanely _grateful_ moan after carelessly kicking off her own heels. As he shrugs off his coat, Spencer whirrs around the place, turning on the lights and closing curtains to block out unwelcome looks – an effort to create distraction, to normalize the entire evening, the entire _situation_ , to herself, yes, she is painfully aware and seriously hopes that Toby isn't. "Can I get you anything to drink? Tea, Coke, coffee…?"

"Since when do you have tea at home?" Toby wonders, the question mark in his tone housing more puzzlement that it normally would; a reaction to Spencer disappearing in the kitchen the second he had stepped into the living area to join her.

"I don't, actually," she admits with ease, grabbing two glasses and an open bottle of water from the fridge. "But I figured that it would make me sound more health-conscious."

She hears him laugh; a pleasant, rumbling, _warm_ sound that inevitably makes her beam as well.

When Spencer comes back to the living room, forming tiny grimaces with each aching step she takes due to her swollen feet, she doesn't register right away that he isn't sat on his typical spot on her couch; always so comfortable, nonchalant and familiar. Instead, he is standing on the rug with his shoes off despite her earlier comment; white socks, at least a week's worth of stubble, a self-assured glimmer in his eyes.

Making a bemused noise in her throat, she pours water into their glasses on the table. "You can sit down, you know."

"Oh, I know," he replies, shrugging his shoulders. "But I'm not."

"Okay?" she responds with a slight laugh, thoroughly confused. "Should I be standing too?"

"Hm… yeah, probably," he retorts and nods, his expression, voice and posture all serious. Still more than baffled, she knits her eyebrows together but decides to comply to his request anyhow and moves to stand in front of him. He sends her a smirk and adds, "'cuz, y'know, I was gonna 'make a move' now. That's what you called it, right? Make a move?"

"You're doing _what_ now?"

"C'mere." He is incredibly gentle when he starts drawing her closer to him; to her great surprise, though, it's not by her waist like she had assumed after _that_ fucking cocky remark, but by her exposed arms, his fingers brushing against her skin in the softest way imaginable.

"Toby, honestly, what is happen…" His tender hold on her arms stop her as he slowly, carefully brings them around his neck and then proceeds to rest his hands on her hips. She had expected a great deal of things – expected a crushing hug, hoped for a kiss to quieten her insatiable hunger for more – but this definitely wasn't on her list. She looks at him. "Are we… are we dancing?"

It appears as though he has issues keeping up the mask of ice-cold self-confidence and cockiness because he suddenly lets go of it and breaks into delightful laughter, his eyes all crinkly in the edges. Before she can stop herself, she grins up at him. "Yeah," he says. "We're dancing."

"Oh, come on. Without music? Amateur." Spencer tightens her grip around his neck somewhat, scared of losing body contact and reassured at him immediately returning the favor around her middle, and then tilts her head in the direction of her new birthday present. "Alexa, play Jazz."

" _Okay. I'm playing Jazz now."_

"Alexa," Toby speaks up, his voice vibrating right by her ear. "Play Smooth Jazz."

" _Okay. I'm playing Smooth Jazz now_."

"Hmmm," she makes and leans back slightly so as to gaze at him better. She continues, nodding her head, a faux air of nonchalance accompanying her words, "Smooth Jazz. Excellent choice. I'm impressed. Now watch this though: Alexa, dim the living room lights."

" _Okay. I'm dimming the living room lights."_

With the music and the lights and his breath tickling her skin and her fingers absently combing through the hair at the back of his neck as though she does it every day and his hands resting on her hips a little lower than would perhaps be appropriate for people under their circumstances and her heart growing wings and excitedly fluttering about her chest and his _scent_ and his _body_ and his _warmth_ completely overwhelming her, driving her fucking _insane_ , the atmosphere then changes too. What had she called it? Desire on a quantum level.

So they dance to no particular rhythm. The song her Amazon Echo has picked isn't all that slow but they are swaying anyway, swaying back and forth gently, and every now and then, she finds his eyes dropping, helplessly gazing at her mouth, and part of her wishes he would go for it and yet he doesn't; another part of her wishes _she_ would just go for it, get on her tiptoes or roughly pull at his hair to get him closer, closer, _closer_ , and yet she doesn't move an inch either.

"See, I told you I'd get better at this eventually," Toby points out after a bit, his voice a murmur, as though mindful not to scare the moment off by being too loud.

She smiles. "You were never terrible," she tells him, automatically adapting his tone.

"Well, I disagree," he retorts, wrinkling his nose. "But I'm much better now. I practiced a lot."

"With whom? Yvonne?" Spencer tilts her head, brows raised, and it's for the first time in a while that the other woman's name doesn't leave an unidentifiable taste in her mouth, doesn't awaken a strange mixture of insecurity, longing, and heartache within her. The first time in a while that she can speak it casually and not feel an ounce of… envy, jealousy, _whatever_ right after. The first time in a while that she can acknowledge his past and acknowledge her own and accept both for what they are: long gone, a life lesson learned, a person loved and lost. _Huh_.

"No," Toby says. "Her grandmother, actually."

Spencer instantly starts laughing. "Her _grandmother_?"

"Yeah, it's funny, 'cuz the first time I met her, she's this… she's this _very_ serious-looking lady who dresses better than literally anyone I've ever seen, and I kept thinking, uh-oh, this woman's already staring me down even though I haven't said anything yet, I bet she hates me," he begins and she doesn't know if she is laughing at his story, his hilarious tone of voice or his obviously pained expression.

"Grandma Phillips sounds like a fellow member of the RBF club… that I'm president of," she comments and then adds, on his questioning look, " _Resting bitch face_. Trust me, it's a struggle. At my old workplace, they'd constantly tell me to smile more because I allegedly looked mean."

"No, she didn't look _mean_. She just looked like… like she'd rather be somewhere else."

"Yeah. Resting bitch face."

He chuckles. "Anyway, she's definitely one of the nicest people I know. Every time we visited her, she'd make me get up and dance with her and then tell me how she used to go dancing with her husband when they were young but now they can't because he's always complaining about his leg and back and hips and… you know, regular grandparents stuff."

"God, what is it with you immediately befriending any old person, baby and animal you meet?"

" _What is it with_ …" Toby trails off, giving a short laugh as he regards her with confusion. "What is that even supposed to mean?"

"You know _exactly_ what that means," Spencer replies, shaking her head in mock-anger. "We've been broken up for years and I'm pretty sure my parents are still head over heels, listening-to-Sinead-O'Connor-twenty-four-seven in love with you. Sometimes I feel like they love you more than they love me."

Toby throws his head back and lets a barking laugh slip. "Yeah… _slight_ exaggeration there."

"Well, that's what they want you to think. You should've seen my dad when I was dating Caleb. It was always Toby this and Toby that. _Toby, Toby, Toby._ At one point, I was _so_ tired of his crap, I seriously considered telling him to give it a shot and ask you out if he misses you that badly."

He is still laughing and laughing, unknowingly making her heart spin and spin, when he retorts, "To be fair, they didn't have much of a choice. I didn't have a lot of worthy competition to live up to, thanks to Melissa's dating choices. I mean, they compared me to… what? Wren and Ian?"

"You're always so modest, it's annoying. Why is it so hard for you to accept that people actually like you for who you are?"

"Why is it so hard for _you_ to accept that people like you for who _you_ are?" he echoes and raises his eyebrow at her.

"Well, that's because they… don't?" She shrugs. "Women usually don't like me because I come off way too competitive, tactless and cold. Men, on the other hand, usually like me for different reasons entirely. And forget about babies. Yeah, I had that moment with Oscar a while ago, but it's honestly more of a friendship of convenience than anything else."

"Excuses, excuses," he tsks, and one of his thumbs is drawing circles on her hip, like he is doing it without thinking. "Is this a self-worth thing again?"

"It's not a self-worth thing. It's a truth thing," she corrects him, hesitant at first, then responding to his touch by playing with his hair again. "I mean, it doesn't bother me that much. I get along with people… mostly. It's not like I'm a complete loser. But I know that I tend to come across like… like I'm kinda mean and harsh and easy to dish out critique and walk over anyone in my way."

He stares at her as though he doesn't comprehend. "Is that seriously how you see yourself?"

"Yeah, don't give me that look. Your opinion doesn't count. You're biased." She snorts, amused, and adds, holding his eyes to check his reaction to her pathetic pun, "To- _biased_."

But his face remains thoughtful and he doesn't laugh. "I'm used to your self-deprecating humor, but I still can't believe that's how you think of yourself. You're literally one of the most gentle, compassionate, soft-hearted-"

"Well, you don't know a lot of people, then," she cuts him off. "And again, you don't count."

"And I don't count because…? It challenges your views and you don't like being called out on your bullshit?"

"No. You don't count because you've seen me at my worst more than once and decided to stick around anyway… well, for the most part," she shoots back in a patient voice, then smiles up at him sardonically when his face falls. "See, I can also bring up stuff _you_ don't like to hear."

He is momentarily silent, then mumbles, "Yeah. That was mean. I'll give you that."

"I _am_ mean."

"Mhm. You're about as mean and threatening as a puppy."

Slowly leaning into him more, she giggles in response and rests her cheek against his shoulder, her grasp on his neck gradually loosening before she lets go, lets her arms circle his lower back in comfort instead. They aren't dancing anymore, not really. It's hugging with convenient music playing in the background, a sign that they ought to break apart now to keep things from getting complicated, but it's nice, feeling his chest lightly against hers, chin on top of her head, his hand lazily ascend her back to run through her hair like he would do ages ago, and she knows that he is no doubt about to mess up, sort of ruin, what she had tried her best to make seem presentable, and she finds that she doesn't care. It's past midnight, her birthday officially over, and she has survived another year, and here is one thing, one thing that her twenty-fifth birthday didn't have, one realization she had never fully understood until now and that is…

Here is the unexpected truth, with a slight pinch of ugly and a little bit of hurt: She doesn't _need_ him anymore. She doesn't need him to feel whole, to feel complete, and maybe that's why they had fallen apart so miserably the first time around, why they hadn't worked out and most likely never would have. Because back then, all she would ever do was try and find the missing parts to herself in him, in his kiss, in his heart, in his love and devotion, and he, in turn, had _tried_ to fill her, to pick up all her ridiculously small pieces, collect them inside his palms, but in the end, he was just as much of a lost kid as she was, recklessly abandoned and forgotten by the world.

And she doesn't _need_ him anymore. Not like that. Not _for_ that. Yeah, she is still broken in ways she knows will never entirely heal, messy in ways she knows will never entirely disappear, and a little bruised by life, then love, then life and love all over again, but she – she is a person and she is good on her own, right? Even with the numerous, missing fragments she _seriously_ needs to quit searching for in other people. Even with the, at times, crushing darkness of her mind she _seriously_ needs to quit numbing with – with _boozeanddrugsandsexanddrugs_ – with _things_ that ultimately do her way more harm than good.

And she doesn't need him.

But she _wants_ him. God, she has never wanted someone so badly.

Here is the bittersweet truth, with a slight pinch of irony and a little bit of opportunities lost: the first time, she had swallowed his love wholly, swallowed and chewed and eaten him up without a care, replaced those gaping holes with him, and when he had left, which she suspects he would have done regardless of Charlotte and Rosewood, and Rosewood and Charlotte, he took all she had with him too, ripped it out of her hands, merciless, ruthless, so endlessly cruel, and she had thought – she had genuinely thought that she would stop breathing without him by her side, was convinced she wouldn't live through it, somehow fight her way out of the hollowness and back into the light again.

Yeah… funny, how that had worked out, huh?

He had left, and she continued breathing anyway. She survived anyway. She _lived_ anyway – for days, weeks, months, years, and she knows she would, easily _could_ do it again. Because if there is anything his absence has managed to teach her, it's that there _is_ life without him, and it's not a horrible one either. It's full of laughter and healing, full of happiness and joy, full of love and new chapters if only she allowed herself to another taste. She knows all that.

But it's here, in the safety of his embrace, on the evening of her 26th birthday that she realizes, that she eventually _recognizes_ : she isn't interested in it. She isn't interested in a life that doesn't hold him.

Arms slung around his middle, she tilts her head back to look at him, look into his eyes deeply, and she thinks, amazed how easy it comes to her, how easy it is to admit now, _I love him_.

There _is_ a certain beauty to it, isn't there, beauty in an innocent love that is not another cage she has built around them, imprisoning and banishing them behind walls; beauty in a wild love that roams free and does not aim to possess; beauty in actively choosing him, beauty in continuously _wanting_ to choose him – again and again, over and over – despite not needing him any longer to heal her, to make her complete, to make her whole, to fix what is only hers to fix. She doesn't remember love ever feeling quite like this before.

Toby merely regards her, eyes bright and twinkling under the dimmed lights of her living room, eyes reflecting back at her the woman she had always wished she could be and is finally on her way to become, and Spencer merely holds his steady gaze, feeling warm and cold, the happiest she has ever been and scared to death at the very same time. She lets her gaze drop to his mouth then, without thinking, without stopping herself from doing something incredibly reckless, her shaking breath and traitorous heart both getting caught in her throat when he automatically, she almost wants to say _instinctively_ , mimics her actions. Like he is thinking about the same thing.

Right then, in those two and a half seconds before the inevitable collision, she thinks how many years it has been – _six_ – how many miles they had to walk to end up here again, in each other's arms – _Rosewood, D.C, Maine, then Boston, Worcester, and some more in-between_ – how many loves they have found and decided to leave behind – _two, possibly others_ – how long it has been since she last felt like this, so out of control, overwhelmed, anxious in the worst ways, anxious in the best ways.

And so violently out of control as she is, she raises on her tiptoes unhurriedly, delightedly aware of his warm gasp of surprise tickling the skin of her face, of his heaving chest flush against hers, the persistent tug in her abdomen creeping, sinking, dropping farther down. She is damn close to spiraling, coming undone, she knows she is, as she inhales his increasing longing for her, his nervousness too, eyes darkening with desire, with blazing _want_. It's fucking intoxicating. More than once had she fantasized about this in great length and detail; more than once had she dared picture him looking at her like _that_ again, but it's absolutely nothing compared to the real thing, she muses, watches him watch her, watches him _crave_ her, watches him wait for her next move.

That's what he does, he just _waits_ , breathing his still unspoken words into her, breathing against her insecurities loud and clear, his soft finger skillfully caressing her spine, running up, running down, igniting flames that are threatening to burn them beyond recognition, so Spencer decides to be brave against all remaining odds, to be stupid against her brain thrashing around wildly in disapproval. So Spencer decides to – decides to love, decides to love, decides to _love_ and break them free from this irksome curse, and gently, very gently, leans in and closes the lingering gap between them; gently, very gently, lets her eyelids flutter closed and brushes her mouth against his in invitation, yet mindful to grant him some time to decide as well, decide whether he wants to accept it, take it, whether he wants to take _her_ , and what she means is take _all_ of her.

His lips are warm, _softer_ than she remembers. His surprise, too, his (she wants to say) confused hesitancy are more palpable than they had been in her imagination. Briefly, she lets herself get lost in it again, get giddy with excitement, with trembling anticipation; draws paintings of him and his hands gripping her hips while his mouth is devouring hers like she is the only thing that can truly quench his thirst, and then he breathes against her, maneuvers them in the direction of the bedroom, eventually giving up, giving _into_ his desire on their way and just half-pushing her up against the wall, first struggling with her dress, then struggling to drag her underwear down her quivering legs as well, but _he_ , the real Toby, pulls her back, back, back into the present, into the beautiful _now_. Into the reality that is them, right here, in her dark living room, so effortlessly interlocked again, for the first time in… for the first time in an eternity and a day. A reality that is somehow much prettier, much sweeter and much, _much_ scarier than her fantasies too.

He finally moves his mouth over hers, his soft lips blossoming in her silent invitation, seemingly reveling in her kiss, and for a whole second or two, Spencer forgets what it means to exist, how to _breathe_ or perhaps she is breathing again for the first time in years, she isn't sure. The fantasy inside her head abruptly makes way to a memory, to a memory of another time, of another _life_ , of them at the Edgewood that fateful morning, of his lips slowly tasting from each drop of love she had to offer, of his hands holding her so delicately, so cautiously as though afraid she might vanish, and she wonders – she wonders if he is feeling it too, if he is now thinking about it too, because his tender grasp, his tender hands come to a rest on the small of her back, pulling her into him more, like he is trying his best to ensure that every inch of him is touching every inch of her, and she (melts away in his embrace, melts away against his mouth and) wraps her arms around his neck, mind going pleasantly hazy.

She is ridiculously turned on already and the worst part is that she can't even tell what is causing her blood, her desire, her breath to skyrocket past any chance at effective recovery: Toby or his obvious hunger for her, Toby or what she can (gleefully, happily, eagerly) sense she is doing to him and his beautiful body without doing much at all, Toby or what she assumes must be going through his head as his fingers dip into where he knows her dimples are patiently awaiting him, hidden under the dress she wishes he would rip off her with gusto. But she – she wants more. She wants _more, more, more_. She wants all of him, she wants _him_ to want all of her; she wants his heart bare inside her palms, she wants him to hold hers inside his and intently inspect it (and then meet her eyes and nod like he understands all the mistakes and failures she first had to live and learn before she came back, ready to give, ready to take, ready to love, ready to _be_ loved.)

Feeling almost but not quite drunk, almost but not quite crazy with yearning, she slowly traces his bottom lip with her tongue, and he, he welcomes her in at once, not hesitating, welcomes in her kiss, her winged love, everything she is trying to wordlessly express, everything she is trying to tell him, and _god_ , his tongue meets hers sloppily (and she pictures that same tongue leaving a wet trail on her neck, over her chest, gliding further down, down, down, all the way down), and she sinks her fingernails into his arms, breathes a moan into his hot, willing mouth that he reciprocates with a muffled whimper of his own and _god_ – it took them six years to get here but it only takes them five seconds to combust.

The playlist from before is still on, quietly playing in the background and yet unheard; they are engaging in an entirely new type of dance now, becoming an orchestra of delightful music and sounds, tongues finding an easy rhythm, hands and fingers endlessly stroking and caressing like plucking strings and enticing melodies, and Spencer has trouble telling which hands belongs to her, which hands belong to him, and what the difference is anyway. She (pictures him hovering over her as he throws her dress somewhere behind him, his breath quickening in anticipation at her newly exposed skin, and back in reality, she) slowly combs her fingers through his soft hair, gradually sinking down to her feet and half-tugging to make him lean down with her, afraid to break their searing kiss, afraid to lose skin contact (and then she pictures him vigorously kissing and sucking at her neck in order to leave a dark-purple bruise, pictures herself burying her nose in _his_ neck, burying her _teeth_ right there too). He gently holds the back of her neck, squeezes it affectionately while his expert mouth relentlessly dances with hers in hunger (and she pictures him holding onto it, squeezing way harder than _this_ , while she has her face in her pillow and he is fucking her without an ounce of mercy) and he strokes his free hand down her waist (and she pictures him sneaking it between her legs like she wants, no, _needs_ him to) as she emits another approving sigh into his mouth, half-mumbling his name.

Caught between reality, the present, the _now_ that is causing the restless birds inside her chest to helplessly flutter about in an erratic frenzy, and a myriad of fantasies and fantasies spurring her on more; caught between sweet lust and sweeter love as they hug each other so tightly, become one, produce an overwhelming cocktail she hasn't quite experienced in… in… she has no idea how long, Spencer feels incredibly dizzy. Her silly heart is going a mile a minute, still singing and writhing under his knowing touch, still dancing and spinning too, as if it is more than intent to break her chest and jump him like she has been dreaming them, and she pictures him laying his palm over it, simultaneously calming it down and digging into the bottomless pit eating up her stomach, and she pictures him, pictures him – her legs are warning her to keep it steady, to go _slow_ , because they feel weak under her weight when his tongue yet again collides with hers, his low, guttural groan making goosebumps erupt on her exposed arms, and she takes his hand, takes it gently, takes it from her hip, and places it over her heart.

But Toby freezes. Just somewhat, yes, but it _is_ noticeable, graspable, in the way his mouth slows down against hers suddenly, as if he is about to break away, stop; in the way his hand remains unresponsive on her body, unsure, as if the fog their kiss had cast over his mind is clearing up, as if he is starting to nourish second thoughts – _about them? or about her?_ – as if he is ready to hold off, hold back, and that observation is enough to make Spencer panic but she doesn't allow herself to. Instead, she squeezes her eyes shut, grunts, hums, _moans_ her encouragement to pull him back into the present, tries to reignite the fire in her stomach that is close to pitifully fizzling out under his hesitancy; a new kind of hesitancy, a _different_ kind of hesitancy. It's not shyness, not even nervousness, it's pure rationality on his part; it's the awareness that _this_ , this here, right now, is not a good idea. She hastily whisks that thought away from her though, from him, from them, and pictures – pictures him beneath her, petting whatever he can reach of her legs, staring up at her from under half-closed eyelids like she is the fucking universe; pictures him leaving tiny, open-mouthed kisses on her burning hot skin, breathing out heavily when he reaches well-below her navel, eyes dark; pictures them collapsing on her bed after another round, completely out of breath, completely out of words too, as the remains of their encounter run down her inner thigh. She squeezes her eyes shut more, kisses him more ( _more, more, more_ ), rests her hand on his chest too, over his heart, just like he is doing. All but claws at him, desperate, attempting to ground herself in reality, attempting to make it _last_ although a small fraction of her knows that it won't, as she walks them away from the rug until her back meets with the nearest wall.

She exhales through her brief pain soundly, twists her tongue against his, tells herself that it will be fine, tells herself to make it true. She wraps her leg loosely around his hip, lets passing relief flood her when he steadies her despite or in spite the crushing waves of indecision she can still taste vividly in his mouth, tells herself that it will pass, tells herself to make it true. She becomes aware, then, of the moment slipping from her hold, frantically cradles his face in response, half-burying, half-digging her fingers into his messy hair, holding onto him, holding onto them, onto the feeling, tells herself that this is right, tells herself to make it true.

Where flames had licked at her navel a mere five minutes ago, though, it's now despair gnawing away at her stomach, gradually growing louder and louder, all but drowning out her determined whimpers. She wonders if maybe she has been wrong about this, about his feelings, about _them_ , if she has been reading too much into made-up signs that had never existed in the first place – she cuts herself off, _begs_ her thoughts to leave, fingernails scratching the back of his neck and prompting a grunt from him, pictures herself pulling his belt through the buckle before kneeling down to pray. She wonders what the hell they are doing here, frivolously jumping into the abyss with lighthearted smiles of joy plastered over their feature. She wonders how she could possibly make sense of this, how this _isn't_ worse than anything she had feared because _this_ , this isn't just about risking a thriving friendship, playing poker with regained trust, it's following and trapping each other in the same vicious, endless cycle from before, it's still refusing to _talk_ and skipping straight to _fucking_ , like they would always do whenever they stirred the pot and woke up trouble from its deep slumber, and she wonders what that says about her, what that says about the life expectancy of… wherever this is going, whatever this is going to be – she tries to suffocate her brain, turn off her rising anxiety, tries to force herself back to the mindless want she was feeling earlier, pictures him taking her right here, against the wall, shoving her panties aside, but even in her fantasies, the cocky grin on his face she constructs looks grotesque, looks unfamiliar, and even in her fantasies, his fingers are hesitant on her skin, calloused and uncertain as he cups her breasts over her bra, and even in her fantasies, Spencer can't feel a thing but panic crawling up her throat like bile.

She had called herself brave when she rose on her tiptoes, leaned up, leaned _in_ to kiss him, but that title, she muses, was utterly undeserved, perhaps _stupidity_ that she had somehow mistaken for courage, because it's _him_ who is brave enough to break them apart before they can embrace the disaster they could have been, would have been (or _should_ have been). Toby slowly releases her mouth, his breath coming in short pants that she can feel on her chin, and Spencer can't say that she is surprised. The moment, after all, is long gone; the nauseating voice demanding _more, more, more_ sitting behind her ears is gone too, instead replaced by a strong odor of rotten shame and guilt. Toby is still holding her head as though refusing to let go of her fully, hand squeezed between her hair and the wall, and he apprehensively searches her eyes, and she, in turn, blinks and finds his darkened with sentimental yearning, pupils widened, but the only thing that startles awake inside her now is… is nothing. She is numb. Beyond numb.

"I… I should go," Toby whispers, his face open, trusting, apologetic. She feels strangely empty. God, what she really wants is a drink. "I still have a one-hour drive back home…"

Spencer nearly laughs at how ridiculous she is convinced they must look right now: intimately intertwined, propped against the wall, in-between two vintage film posters, her and her swollen lips, her flushed cheeks, her dress riding up her thighs, him and his sweaty forehead, his messy hair, the pretty crescents her nails have left on him adorning his neck that she almost feels sorry for. And now, now he is standing there, like she couldn't taste the various doubts on his tongue, like she couldn't sense his fears, like she couldn't feel the uncertainties in his touch, like nothing of importance happened, and he is telling her that he has to leave, that he should ago. After what transpired, after all that, or maybe _despite_ all that, he is telling her that he has to go. It's fucking ridiculous. Unexpected? No. But absolutely ridiculous just the same.

"Yeah. Yeah, you should. You have to be at work at six tomorrow," she reminds him regardless as she puts her stocking-clad leg back on the floor, complete with a casual nod. "And it's getting really late."

But Toby doesn't move an inch, only holds her eyes, thumb stroking her cheek tenderly as he nuzzles his nose against hers, and Spencer looks up at him, her heart, at last, giving another familiar tug, another familiar _jump_ in her ribcage, and for a moment, she tries to (re)capture the feelings from earlier, tries to picture – pictures them waking up together in the mornings, a mess of limbs, her ear resting on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, as his fingers delicately run over the bare skin of her back, and for a moment, it actually works. Slightly lightheaded and stomach turning with motion sickness from the continuous up and down of the emotional rollercoaster they are still riding on, have been riding on for the past so-and-so many months, she closes her eyes again, presses her lips to his to chase away reality, to _forget_ , grateful when he returns her kiss and yet unsure what to make of it either. Then she tries to picture a world where they don't feel like a lost cause, where she doesn't feel stupid for firmly believing that they could make it this time, where she doesn't feel childish for believing that they could survive, thrive, grow this time; a world where they refuse to let history repeat itself over and over.

Squeezing her eyes shut to the world they _are_ living in, she pours her love into his mouth, hopes that he will be able to catch it, but their kiss, it feels different now. It's slower, gentler, devoid of the same desperate hunger from earlier, and it's almost painful when his sweet mouth moves over hers, a remorseful little ache settling inside her. It feels like goodbye for some reason and that's when she realizes it's time to let go. Let the moment go. Let her fantasies go.

Breaking away slightly, eyes closed still, Spencer rests her forehead against his. "We shouldn't."

"Yeah, you're right," Toby agrees in a low tone she has adapted as well. He momentarily traces her bottom lip with his thumb, lost in thought, before both his hands fall from her face and her hip too, leaving her all but shivering in his sudden absence. "It's probably a bad idea anyway."

"It'd be a _really_ bad idea," Spencer says, mind finally sober, awake enough to meet his gaze as she pulls the corner of her mouth up into a smile she doesn't really mean. He mimics her facial expression and she nearly flinches at the unexpected twitch her heart gives at his eyes remaining blank, like her words have effectively sliced though him. "You should… you should go home."

(Here is the whole truth, with a slight pinch of _fuck_ and a little bit of _huh_ : it's a tale she has both read and written a thousand times over. He has gotten better at staying in the face of the pressing urge to run, to escape, to _flee_ when he is hurting, but it seems as if it is still a part of him he will never completely eliminate and it seems as if aggressively numbing herself is still an unchanged part of _her_ too because she follows him to the stairs, arms crossed over her chest, her coat inside the apartment, her dignity around her feet, and feeling painfully empty. She stands there, leaning against the railing, watches him walk to his car, watches him look – hesitantly _smile_ but it's not real – back at her once, twice, three times, until she can't see him any longer, until he becomes the night, until she is trembling from the cold, but she loves him even then. She loves him even when he leaves.

And maybe, maybe it's foolish, maybe it's naïve, maybe it's stupid or childish like she had said, but she loves him even when he is long gone, even when she is left alone with her bitter thoughts and her countless fantasies spiraling, left alone with her nausea making her stomach churn, left alone with her pretty fears dancing where they had danced, kissing where they had kissed. She loves him even when she inhales the darkness forming clouds on her mind that are threatening to rain over her, pull her in, and loves him even or perhaps she loves him _especially_ when she exhales them again, vehemently refusing to let them win.

She loves him even when realization hits her, even when her heart abruptly drops in response and her panic chooses that exact moment to rush back to her with vigor, wrapping her inside its arms like an old friend, even when she pauses, _freezes up_ in light of the observation she hadn't anticipated to visit, even when her inner voice suddenly proclaims, _and I think he loves me too_.)

* * *

So Spencer calls them a ' _really_ bad idea' and maybe he hasn't quite earned the right to get upset over an insignificant detail in her wording, considering that it was _Toby_ who had described their sudden, insatiable hunger for one another as a 'bad idea' first but it stings just the same. It stings even more, twitches hideously inside his chest, when she picks radio silence the next morning, the next afternoon and the next evening, too, leaving him to his own devices and very adamant to push away unwanted feelings of both rejection _and_ guilt he has trouble telling apart because they are all scrunched up into tiny, indistinguishable balls like socks in the drawers of his mind.

_Really bad idea_.

Later, then, after night falls and his mood falls further too, Toby lies wide awake in bed, unable to succumb to sleep despite sheer fatigue nonstop poking at the corners of his eyes, and watches the headlights of passing cars break through the blinds, cast shadows on his white walls and his ceiling. _Really bad idea_. Toby exhales a sigh. Having tasted from her again (from her lips, from her love, from everything that she is, from everything they could be), he doesn't know if he still agrees with that bold statement. Sure, perhaps they _are_ headed for inevitable doom and disaster, regardless of age, maturity and life experience they begrudgingly had to collect over the last six years or so. And sure, perhaps the price of impulsivity _is_ way too high to afford, now that there is so much to risk and even more to lose. And sure, perhaps he _is_ beyond scared, scared to hurt her, scared to _lose_ her, let her go, once he royally fucks up again which he knows he will because that's what he has always done, what he will always do. And sure, perhaps Spencer _is_ right and perhaps it _is_ a bad idea, a _really_ bad idea, to work so hard to return to a place where hearts are mostly mended, where failures are mostly forgiven, where the darkness has mostly disappeared, where they can finally exist together as friends or something that vaguely looks like it, and then blindly toss it out the window for a fleeting moment of passion or something that vaguely looks like it. But still… but still… but still…

Emitting a groan into the quiet of his studio, Toby pulls a little grimace, turns to lie on his back and then proceeds to throw his arm over his eyes. But _still_. But still, he doesn't understand what is so wrong about believing – about _wanting_ to believe, to hold onto hope against all hope. And Toby knows, of course he does, of course he never managed to forget, that they had fallen apart pathetically six years ago, but six years ago they aren't anymore. They are older, not particularly wiser if he has to be honest, though smarter, taller, healed (and broken again in entirely different ways than before). _Really bad idea_. Heaving a drawn out, frustrated sigh, he moves against the mattress until he is on his side, clutching the pillow under his head. He blinks at the dark outlines of the small dining table and chairs, remembers them giddily sitting down for lunch just a couple of weeks ago, and quietly wonders, eyebrows furrowed, _who's to say we'd fail again this time?_

Another voice inside him, louder than his convictions, adds, _and who's to say that we wouldn't?_

The following morning, he is stuck in his Health seminar, half-listening, half-dreaming what he couldn't the night before, and his mouth tingles with the ghosts of their kiss, the remainders of her soft, soft skin beneath his fingertips, and it's a different type of longing, a different sort of remembrance blowing its foul-smelling breath into Toby's ear, writing long-winded thoughts better left unthought into his brains. The memory of their dance, of them not accidentally losing but willingly _giving up_ control, cuts him. Slices, carves his flesh, because he knows, he knows, he knows that it won't happen, knows that it _can't_ happen again. Because he knows that they can't gamble away what they have built. Because he knows that the only thing that he could possibly offer her is heartbreak anyway and, and, and _hurt_ and unhappiness and the very cycle from years ago and—

Interrupting himself with a deliberate internal flinch, he idly doodles into his notebook, creating first drafts and a handful of casual sketches too before an insistent need for perfectionism takes over, compels him to throw them out again, and Toby, well, Toby doesn't have much choice but to listen, does he; not much choice but to release an exasperated sigh at himself as he tears out the page he had been busy with, erases yet another stupid mistake that could have been avoided. His mind, though, his mind is on _her_. Again. Still. Again. Sti—Toby balls up the piece of paper in his fist.

Professor Kapoor, in the meantime, is playing his usual game of _Rapid Fire Questions_. "Lauren, please name two design characteristics that are typically considered to create health benefits."

Toby furrows his brow at his notebook. _Well, that looks like total crap_.

"Just two? Oh. All right. Well, maybe, uh, maybe views of the neighborhood and nature from the home? So, low windows sills, openable windows?" Lauren replies. "And, uh, development that encourages walking and cycling? So, uh, easier access to public transport and local services to reduce reliance on the car?"

_Yeah, that definitely looks like crap_. Making an annoyed face, Toby scratches out another poorly done drawing.

"Yes. Good. Very good," Professor Kapoor responds. "Now, Toby, according to Vitruvius, what are the three elements required for a well-designed building?"

Unbothered, however, Toby keeps drawing, doodling and sketching until his classmate Marquis gives a harrumph sound from beside him, causing him to raise his head in confusion. Toby then realizes, approximately half a minute too late, that he is in fact the only Toby in his class. "Um… I'm sorry, what was the question?"

Somewhere behind him, a couple of students break into laughter.

But Professor Kapoor doesn't seem too fazed. "The triad of characteristics by Vitruvius."

"The fundamental principles of architecture. That's freshman stuff. That's fucking high school stuff. I'm pretty sure I learned that in high school," Marquis states, after, when they are on their way to the cozy sofa and armchairs that the students from the Art department have sarcastically dubbed 'The Architect's Corner'. "It's _firmitas_ …"

" _Utilitas et venustas_ ," Toby chimes in, finishes with him. "I know. I just… wasn't listening?"

"I noticed. And so did Kapoor," Marquis remarks in a dry tone as he sits. "You've been drawing in your notebook all morning. Did I forget that we had homework? What are you even doing?"

But Toby, satisfied for now, satisfied at last, merely peeks down at said notebook resting in his lap, wipes off the residual crumbs of his eraser. Gazes down at the rough design of the desk that he has been working on – _firmitas, utilitas et venustas_ ; solid, useful, beautiful – and his mind is still _on her, on her, on her_ , as he shrugs his response to Marquis because, honestly, Toby doesn't know what he is doing either though he figures that maybe it will come to him eventually.

(It doesn't. Not for a while.)

So they kiss on Saturday and by Wednesday morning, they haven't yet mustered up the courage to exchange a single word of honesty with each other, except for an occasional notification here and there popping up on their respective Instagram feeds. Like on Monday night when Spencer uploads a photo of her outstretched legs wrapped in a fleece blanket on her couch, and the coffee table is visible in the background, holding her favorite black ashtray, one of those reusable water bottles, and, amid the most recent issues of _The American Journal of Public Health_ , _The Health Services Research Journal_ , _Vanity Fair_ and _Cosmopolitan_ , there is a familiar copy of _L'Attrape-cœurs_ too. His poor heart spots the book long before he finally does, aching pitifully in his left, and Toby can't really tell whether he is supposed to make mean something out of that, whether she is reading a well-known classic because she enjoys reading (and rereading and _re_ rereading well-known classics), but his thumb won't listen when it halts over the post for a second, terribly unsure, until Toby shoves his hopes and misplaced optimism away – _really bad idea_ – rolls his eyes at himself and simply likes the post like he would do with any other.

Or on Tuesday afternoon where Toby is first fighting boredom and then fighting himself as he waits in line at his favorite lumber distributor. With a hum, he snaps a picture of the contents of his shopping cart – lots of heavy red oak for the table top, aprons, double pedestals, the corners and the drawers… running his hand over the material, he feels almost upset at the thought of staining it with black cherry later – puts it online, boldly captioning it, kind of hoping that she will see and understand, kind of hoping that she will manage to decode his inner turmoil and soothe it with her heart, ' _Starting a new project'_. Not even ten minutes later, he _does_ receive a notification from her; a wordless like that probably shouldn't have this instant, calming effect on him, considering the silence still going on, embracing them, but that bitter comment doesn't really stop his stupid grin from stretching his equally stupid mouth anyhow.

His boss, though not as gruffly polite as Toby recalls Mr. Warren, doesn't need much persuasion to let Toby use the place afterhours, _long as you clean up after yourself_ , and he works tirelessly under the flickering light, feeds the circles under his eyes as he sands the tabletop like nobody's fucking business, making sure to spend an equal amount of time, an equal amount of unyielding effort on both sides, even or especially the one with far too many imperfections to save and any man capable of rational thinking would have given up on hours ago but he can't. He refuses to.

His hands are blistering, buzzing after each sanding session and his mind is blistering, buzzing with thoughts of Spencer, and the blatant irony of their situation isn't lost on Toby; here he is, building and crafting after yet again destroying and wrecking, and he doesn't know what he is even trying, _hoping_ to achieve. (Maybe, just maybe, he wants to say: _Look._ _I build things. I fix things. That's what I do. And if we somehow break each other again, if we struggle and fail, I'll do what I'm good at. I'll patch us back together. I'll build us a new world where we don't have to be a_ what if _, but a certainty. I'll work and work every day, every night, for the rest of our lives to make sure we're good this time. Better. Like I know we can be_.) With a tired sigh, Toby checks the time on his phone – checks for new text messages too but of course fails to find any that he is interested in finding – and wipes his sweaty forehead on his arm. (Maybe, just maybe, he wants to say: _I love you. And I'm fucking terrified to tell you because all I ever manage to do when I love is create destruction._ )

It's on Thursday that Spencer breaks the silence. ' _#TBT_ ,' she has written under a post containing several drunk and not to mention embarrassing photos of their trip to Pizza Hut so many months ago and while Toby is still anxious with sickening worry, with lasting indecisions and screaming uncertainty, he can't help the smile when he sees that she has tagged him in it. He types a short comment – ' _I'm not completely sure how we weren't banned for life'_ – which earns him multiple laughing emojis from Emily in response and a quick text message from Spencer she sends him almost right after. Though the… the _something_ resembling relief that begins stirring inside his chest _is_ a bit surprising (overwhelming), their subsequent conversation is anything but; instead, it more or less relies entirely on the new normal that they have managed to agree on. They talk _Marvel_ , they talk some new album by some new artist, they talk work (which results in Spencer ranting about health care reforms). Actually, they talk about everything but the past few days. In-between a couple of remarks about the weather and some lighthearted jokes about their (more than) boring plans for the weekend, Toby comes face to face with an unexpected realization: it feels like nothing happened. Not their searing kiss. Not the deafening quiet. Not their emotions wreaking havoc. And certainly not the dreadful pit in his stomach expanding further in time with the casualness of her words, the apparent nonchalance when she briefly mentions the food they had had on her birthday, ignoring what had transpired a mere few hours after. He doesn't know how to feel about all that, how he is meant to feel about all that, but Spencer seemingly settles on playing pretend, so Toby decides to wade through a long stream of consciousness that steadily starts flowing into the river of the Nile.

(And when he returns to the workshop and proudly regards his progress so far and she calls him up on the phone and her laugh is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard, he almost tells her the truth; he nearly tells her that he _knows_ the smart thing to do would be to leave this alone, to let it pass, but his heart wants what it wants, and his heart wants to be irrationally stupid with her, for her, because of her. Only, of course, he doesn't dare say a word. He just bites his tongue and keeps his traitorous mouth shut. Instead, he reciprocates her attempts at small talk. Instead, he pushes down what he isn't allowed to muse over. Instead, he thinks that this is a goddamn disaster. He needs someone to talk to, someone who will spell out to him what he is supposed to do, but she – she _is_ that someone and that's where his whole dilemma lies, doesn't it? She is that someone he shares everything with, that someone he calls whenever something, _anything_ , happens in his life, that someone who understands him when he refuses to understand himself.

And when the gentle memories of last Saturday return to his head and gleefully regard his heart and the vivid pictures in his mind are the entire reason the world is spinning, he almost tells her the truth; he nearly tells her that he _knows_ he is a fucking mess, that she is a mess of a woman too, and that he loves her in her anger, in her destruction, in her sorrow, and that he loves her in her happiness the most. He nearly tells her he _knows_ that he doesn't deserve love, not anyone's, least of all hers, not after everything he has done, but his heart wants what it wants, and his heart wants to learn to be loved by her, for her, because of her. Only, of course, he doesn't dare say a word. He just bites his fantasies and keeps his traitorous love shut.)

On Friday, he skips class to squeeze in another shift at work before the weekend. Work, after all, is good, right; work keeps his brain occupied, his gruesome thoughts busy (for the most part anyway), and his hands from fruitless attempts at reaching within him to scrub off the numerous bloody stains his doubts (and dreams and hopes) have painted on the blank canvas of his mind. His boss sadly doesn't appear to share his newfound enthusiasm – "Yeah, no, I really don't want you near anything sharp with your eyes looking like _that_ ," he proclaims over Toby's incoherent promises and incoherent grumbles of protest – and sends him home early regardless – "Go get some sleep and don't even think about showing up like this again tomorrow morning," he says as Toby drops his response meekly and then drops his gaze just as meekly too. A couple of hours later, Toby finds himself at the grocery story down the street. He is in the middle of figuring out a list for the week (and how exactly he is going to pay for it; he hasn't checked his bank account once since his admittedly very impulsive trip to the lumber distributor and part of him is afraid to do it now) when Spencer texts him: _They're sending me to Chicago next month_.

She adds: _Home, sweet home_.

He puts come carrots in his basket with one hand and responds with the other: _Chicago? Hmm… maybe whoever's living in your apartment now will allow you to use their fire escape. No, really, how do you feel about going back?_

Pulling up the corner of his lips into a little non-smile, he concludes that carrots, rice, bread and eggs will (probably) manage to get him through the next few weeks just fine (although, perhaps 'manage to get him through the next few weeks _somehow_ ' would be a far better choice of words here but he has yet to decide whether he is going to be optimistic about his rather bleak financial situation or not). He shrugs and continues his walk undisturbed to the frozen food aisle to briefly check out the vegetable options there. Meanwhile, Spencer carries on, not really bothering to acknowledge his previous text and well-meant question: _Come with me_.

Somewhat puzzled, somewhat dumbfounded, somewhat thrilled (and utterly, foolishly, terribly in love) at her offer, Toby draws his eyebrows together as he takes in her message, but she isn't done: _I just looked at the calendar. I'm leaving after your finals. Come with me. It's only 5 days._

(And his hopeless heart, of course, leaps into his throat in irrational excitement, instantly recalls and remembers and wishes times gone and times that could be but Toby just gives a tiny painful, internal wince, swiftly pushes away what has to be left alone and then) he types: _I'd love to and I really appreciate that you asked but I can't afford the plane tickets. Let alone the hotel_.

_I'll pay_.

_Yeah, that's not happening_.

_I make more money than you. I'm paying_.

Rolling his eyes in amusement, he inspects a bag of frozen vegetables, puts it into his basket as well, and replies: _I honestly don't feel comfortable having you pay for my shit_.

Naturally, Spencer has a not-so-serious solution for that too: _I'll tell Mizrahi to write an updated report on my mental health status that proves I need you with me in Chicago or I'll have another nervous breakdown. That would make you a business expense and refusing to pay for your costs a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Imagine the media outrage. Health care firm discriminates against own employees. The EEOC would eat that shit up._

Toby roars with laughter, paying no mind whatsoever to the elderly couple in the same aisle as him that tosses him a short albeit highly confused stare (and _god_ , he knows, he knows, he _knows_ that he is repulsive for even briefly entertaining this brand of forbidden thoughts about her, but it would be a lie if he claimed that her message doesn't make him feel at least a little… a little… _flattered_. Yeah. That's the word he was searching. Flattered. Not attracted. Certainly not turned on). Fortunately, his composure (and conscience) returns to him quick. Wiping his laughter from the corners of his eyes and exhaling soundly, he writes: _So… like a service dog?_

Spencer says: _I admit that might've been a tasteless joke but we both know that you *are* about 80% of my impulse control so it wasn't a complete exaggeration. Come with me_.

His mind goes fuzzy, warm, ecstatic. Nevertheless, Toby reasons: _Okay, but what am I supposed to do all day while you're busy with meetings and workshops and stuff? Walk around by myself?_

_Well, you're an architect so… admire the beautiful architecture of Chicago?_

Though smiling against his will, his response to her suggestion is particularly dry: _Ha, ha._

_When's the last time you went on vacation?_

_I don't know. A while. Several years, at least._

_There you go_ , she remarks. And then, a few seconds later: _Come. With. Me._

He doesn't have to mull it over, let it sit for long although perhaps he should be, as a small voice inside him points out; his stomach makes sure to lament its boiling anger (and hunger) at Toby as the latter groans and begins returning most of the more expensive items in his basket to their respective aisles, telling himself that ramen noodles will (likely) manage to get him through the next few weeks just fine. (Really, he would follow her anywhere if she asked him to – even now or especially now, the answer is one of those two, he just hasn't figured out which one it is yet.)

_All right. I'll come with you._

His Saturday almost exclusively consists of work and Cody sending him updates on her bar and Emily challenging him to yet another round of _Words with Friends_ and constant back-and-forth emailing with his advisor and googling architecture businesses in the Boston area (and his heart repeatedly drifting into bouts of wishful thinking whenever it gets the chance to and his thoughts repeatedly sinking into different worlds and different lives where he is courageous like he needs to be so desperately). It's around two or three in the morning that the desk finally starts looking like an _actual_ desk and though Toby is tired (of his emotions coming in like a storm, pulling at him from every direction, attempting to tear him in two) and hungry (for Spencer, her warmth, her embrace, for her love, for her love, for her love) and should _probably_ head home before he falls asleep in his boss' workshop (again), he allows himself a tiny second of pure satisfaction, pride, unabashed joy as he strokes over the desktop (and imagines her sitting at it, typing away on her laptop and taking sips from her coffee – no, he interrupts himself, it's herbal tea that he made her because she has had way too much coffee already, and sometimes, when he carries to the desk a plate with assorted fruits and stops to massage the lasting tension from her shoulders, and her features are all scrunched up in concentration, he feels like he has finally, finally, finally found his way back home). Toby sits down on a nearby bench, rests his aching back, heaves an exhausted sigh as he rubs his watery eyes to fight fatigue (and love, he muses, frowning slightly, love is a funny thing, yes, but the side effects are horribly confusing too; there is nothing in the world that he wants more than her happiness, nothing he wants more than for her monsters and demons to disappear, even if that means that he has to stay away as well, even if that means that they are a ' _really bad idea_ ' and he has to fence in his most treasured desires and dreams in order for her to let go of her past, of Rosewood, of _him_ , and heal wholly, but still, but still, but still…)

_And maybe_ , he adds, later, when he is driving back to his apartment, his body craving sleep and his body craving hers, as his mind dances circles around the memories of their kiss. _Maybe she is right anyway_. Nothing about their current situation – the complete nonchalance, the vehement denial, the mutual agreement to request silence, the refusal to talk it out, the _everything_ and then the _something_ too – grants Toby even the tiniest slice of confidence that things could be different this time either (even if he does find himself pondering what it might be like, a relationship with her, now, six years later: it looks a lot like their early days, their _earliest_ days, the easy, humorful banter from before the chilly morning of November 6th at Edgewood but with the domesticity and almost instinctive trust from their last few years too, and the honesty they had momentarily found and used to keep themselves and each other warm with like a blanket after Mona and the pills and Alison's return, and the sparkling electricity, the sparkling fire that would always come with it, all mixed together with the comfort and the wisdom from today, all mixed together with the friendship they have started from scratch, from sweat and tears and heartbreak, and, well, it sounds perfect, doesn't it? It sounds beyond perfect. But that one time Toby had actually thought of them as perfect, he ended up breaking Spencer's heart anyhow, so he has a hard time trusting perfect, has a hard time _doing_ perfect these days).

Toby sleeps through a good portion of his Sunday (and dreams away an even bigger one; around noon or so, while he is preparing a bowl of dry cereal for breakfast since milk, sadly, _is_ a luxury right now, Aria puts up a picture of Spencer and Oscar watching _Dumbo_ together. They are both seated on the floor, side by side, the baby slightly leaning into his aunt. It's a sweet photograph and Aria's caption – ' _Good: He stopped the hair-pulling. Bad: He switched to drooling into her lap instead. #ProudParentingMoments #MySonIsAShittyFirstDate'_ – makes him emit a chuckle but his mind… his mind remains a heartless traitor because the longer he regards the Instagram post, the longer he stares and blinks and wistfully sighs, the fuzzier his stomach gets, the lighter his insides feel, clinging to visions of a future that doesn't exist anymore, not for them at least – and, yeah, he _knows_ that this is another form of brutal escapism, of fleeing and running away, and to some extent, it feels as though he has never managed to leave Maine; after all, he is still hiding himself in ideals, fantasies and dreams because reality as it is, is too cold, too harsh, too _real_ to face unarmed).

It's on Monday that Toby finally stumbles upon much-needed (albeit brief) distraction when he pours himself into school, pours himself into work, and then pours himself into completing the desk too; and it's on Monday evening that Spencer stumbles upon his moment of maybe sort of peace and seemingly makes the unwise decision to knock it down. Having just returned to his neighborhood and exited his car, it takes Toby a few before he sees her but there she is, waiting on the porch and gracefully raising from the steps when he walks the distance to his apartment.

"Hey Chicago buddy," she teases once he is close enough. In spite of all that the past week has brought them (brought them to their _knees_ ), Toby feels genuinely _elated_ to see her; it makes him dizzy when he realizes that she appears to feel the same. "Or should I be calling you Clark Kent?"

Fishing his keys out of his pocket, he shoots her a bewildered look. She points at his glasses.

"Oh. Yeah. Forgot to take them off." Retorting her amused snort with one of his own, he tosses his glasses into his bag rather carelessly. With the keys in his grip, he briefly wonders whether he is supposed (or even allowed) to hug her hello, the possible awkwardness and clumsiness of it be damned, but Spencer successfully cuts short his thought process by walking to stand beside his apartment door, arms crossed neatly over her chest, like in an attempt to keep him out, keep him away. _Ah_. Something inside Toby flinches but he chooses to ignore it (for now) and simply unlocks the door. "Not to sound rude but did we make plans and I forgot?"

"No," she responds, shrugging her shoulders. "I was in Boston, anyway, and just wanted to drop by. I tried calling but I couldn't reach you."

"Yeah, sorry about that. My phone died literal _hours_ ago," Toby explains as they enter the studio together. That gets him a sympathetic chuckle. Once fully inside, he pulls a grimace behind her back as she removes her jacket, foot hastily shoving out of sight yesterday's basket with fresh laundry that has yet to be folded and put away. He is a disaster of an adult. "I think my battery's done for, to be honest. I keep telling myself that I should go for an Android next time but…"

His sentence fades against her thoughtful hum so he instead turns to place their jackets over the back of the dining chair. The atmosphere, admittedly, is weirder than he had somehow assumed it would be. After all, things between them had seemed (relatively and he almost wants to say _sickeningly_ ) normal on the phone, hadn't they, but seeing her again, _actually_ seeing her again, it's like – it's like staring at the fucking sun. He is afraid to look at her directly (but in his mind, they are dancing still on the rug in her living room, gently swaying from side to side, her brown eyes getting lost in his and his eyes trying to down in hers and…)

"Did you wait long?" Toby questions on his way to the kitchen.

"Uh, maybe an hour? It's fine. I went to CVS," Spencer replies, lazily trailing behind him before putting the bag that she is carrying on top of the counter. She quirks a mischievous eyebrow at him, voice dropping ridiculously low when she adds, in a little fake whisper, "I also got donuts."

He effortlessly catches and returns her smirk, all while making sure to shake his head at her in an amused manner as he grabs a donut from the box she pushes his way dramatically like it's a suitcase full of money. He bites into the donut– fully aware that it _is_ impolite as hell but to be fair, he is close to starving and hasn't had anything to eat since breakfast – and asks her, mouth full, "So how was therapy?"

Thankfully, she doesn't seem to mind his (lack of) manners. "Yeah… I didn't go. Dr. Mizrahi's attending a seminar at Harvard on something or other."

"Hmm." Growing gradually more anxious and uneasy under her truthful, prying gaze searching his stubbornly, searching for something shiny and bright deep inside _him_ that he knows she will not be able to locate, no matter how hard she looks, because what _does_ he have to offer, to give her besides grief, besides pain, Toby coughs, feigns an overzealous interest in the donuts and somewhat lamely remarks, "These are good."

" _Bahstin_ Kreme, huh? Personally, I like the Glazed Blueberry the best." Just as she reaches for it, his eyes fall on the chipped nail polish on her thumbnails as though she has been biting them over and over, incessantly worrying them between her teeth like she does when she gets lost in thought or spends her hours stewing over something yet again. Regardless, he remains quiet at the observation he likely wasn't allowed to make and politely averts his gaze. Spencer, who is leaning against her usual countertop and delightfully devouring her donut, inquires, "How was _your_ day?"

"Uh, pretty long?"

"You look exhausted."

"Yeah, trust me. I _am_ exhausted."

"Is it because of the project you're working on?"

Hesitant, Toby exhales a tiny breath, raises his eyes from the kitchen floor, meeting hers wholly for the first time (and in his head, they are still dancing and swaying and kissing and _loving_ and stupidly happy and happily stupid) and as she wordlessly reciprocates his stare, a confused little frown etched between her eyebrows, he reaches into his pocket to take out his phone and hands it to her.

It doesn't really seem to appease her confusion, however; on his hasty nod, she begins swiping through the pictures on his phone, making a puzzled sound in her throat. "A desk?"

"Yeah," Toby says, hiding his suddenly very sweaty hands in his pockets. "What do you think?"

"Toby, it's… it's beautiful. Is that red oak?" Pausing for a second, she tilts his phone, using her pointer and thumb to zoom in on yesterday's accomplishments. "What happened to your desk though? How's this going to fit in your closet-turned-study?"

"Yeah, well… it's not." At that, Spencer glances up from his phone, and she is smiling, like she knows, like she _knows_ , and like part of her refuses to grasp and believe what is right in front of them anyhow, so Toby clarifies, and luckily, he sounds more confident than he currently feels with her gorgeous eyes focused entirely on his and her face expectant (and the taste of her mouth prominent on his tongue), "It's yours. If you want it."

"It's mine?"

"I mean, I…" He has to look away. He _has_ to (because her smile, her smile, her overjoyed smile makes him want to, makes him want to – want to be stupid and he can't afford stupid, not now). He clears his throat and shrugs, attempting an air of nonchalance. "You keep complaining about your, quote unquote, stupid IKEA desk that the previous tenant left you. So I thought… I don't know, I thought you might appreciate a new one?"

"Toby…" Not bothering to wipe off, hide away or bite down the smile that is still stretching her lips (and something inside Toby is grateful beyond measure), her sentence temporarily trails off into a hum as Spencer looks down at his phone again, inspecting the various pictures with care and an astonishing gentleness. "This _is_ red oak. This cost as least… what? Two-hundred bucks? I really can't accept it."

Pulling up one shoulder, he lies, "I'm a carpenter, remember? I got a discount on the material."

"Still…"

He tilts his head. "Are you saying you don't want it?"

" _No_. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I do want it. I _love_ it," she quickly shoots back, toying with the phone in her hands and unknowingly toying with his heart too that is desperately trying to squirm out of her grasp somehow. "I just… I feel bad. You really didn't have to do that."

"Well, I wanted to," he mumbles.

As he, overwhelmed by the silent bliss on her features and the effect it has on him, spins to turn on the coffee machine, they involuntarily fall into synchronicity (like they would always do in bed… _but that's a thought for another time_ , Toby cuts in, horrified, _specifically never_ ); Spencer gets the mugs and sugar from the top cabinet, stepping aside to let him throw the spoons into them. There is a plethora of things that need to be voiced, talked through, laid out, and they are apparently still making do with coffee and a handful of smiles sent one another across the room.

(He asks himself when exactly they had crossed the line, whether it was really the kiss that had severed any attempts at friendship, the kiss that had all but spiraled into more, into _worse_ , into something bigger part of him almost wants to happen again; if there was ever an actual line to begin with, if they ever truly had the chance to keep things from 'getting complicated'. He had tried to suffocate himself in the arms of another woman for _years_ , spent _months_ of those wishing he could run back in time, stay with _her_ and change what was unchangeable; _why_ had he agreed to friendship when he was always aware, and painfully so, that his useless fucking heart never managed to forget her touch completely? And _why_ is he standing here now, dead silent, mouth feeling as though it was sewn shut by all his fears, stealing glimpses at her breathtaking profile, pushing off the memories of last weekend, and yet pondering what it would be like to go up in flames, what it would be like to burn?)

"Okay," Spencer eventually speaks up, throwing him a sideway glance. "I don't want to sound impatient or ungrateful, but do you… already know when you'll be done?"

Toby laughs. "Uh, hopefully this weekend? I work fast but, y'know, I still have school and work to worry about."

Without warning, she stifles his lingering insecurities (for one or two beats, that is) by engulfing him in her wondrous embrace and to be frank, he _is_ sort of taken aback by that, considering that they have refrained from hugging until now, but he responds (just as enthusiastically) a moment later, swiftly wrapping his arms around her, swiftly letting his eyelids flutter closed in her neck and inhaling, eating, devouring her affection. She feels extraordinarily small against his chest, and he feels extraordinarily small against her unforeseen display of self-confidence as she rocks them, raising on her tiptoes to reach him better. "Thank you," she mutters half into his skin (and yet half into his overflowing heart).

"You're welcome," Toby replies in the same soft tone. "Consider it a belated birthday gift."

Was that the wrong thing to bring up?

He feels her freeze somewhat, pause somewhat, stop somewhat to lift her head and break away.

Yeah, that _was_ the wrong thing to bring up.

Granted, Spencer is smiling when she looks up at him, into his eyes, but he dully notes her arms dropping from his frame almost immediately, her legs taking a calculated step back, her chipper tone holding something he can't quite put a finger on. "You took me out for dinner," she reminds him, once more crossing her arms over her chest and once more, he winces internally. "I thought that was my present. Besides, I never got you anything for _your_ birthday."

"Not true." In order to escape her eyes because if he had to take a wild guess, he would say that the expression on his features must be somewhere between 'confused puppy' and 'three-year-old accidentally abandoned at the local grocery store', Toby bends to grab a couple of plates for the donuts. "You bought me a really nice pen, remember?"

"Yeah, but I don't consider that a gift. It's a necessity," she remarks in a matter-of-fact voice as she takes the plates he is handing her and moves over to the dining area where she puts them as well as the donut box on the table. "All respectable architects own at least one 'really nice pen'."

Toby straightens back up in time with the red light on his (ancient) coffee machine turning off. "Sometimes I feel like you're more excited about me becoming an architect than… well, me."

Contrarily, Spencer hums and retorts, audibly amused, "Then _sometimes_ , you'd be right."

"Yeah. I tend to be."

"Occasionally."

"Occasionally."

When she returns to his side, Toby is pouring coffee into their respective mugs. She proceeds to lean against the counter again, her eyes drilling holes into his back, fingers drumming against the drawer in an irregular (and irritating) rhythm. She is mere seconds away from slithering into that pesky chain-smoking habit she sporadically develops (and maintains) under stress, and his body is mere seconds away from slithering into pesky nausea; something inside him has without difficulty picked up on her growing anxiety, is hellbent on making his stomach perform clumsy somersaults. He hates it.

"Speaking of birthdays," she says, drifting into a cough before she continues, and although he has his back turned to her, still rather frozen in his spot, he can _hear_ the nervous frown that he assumes is slowly but surely taking over her face. "Are we ever gonna talk about what happened on mine?"

"Hmm? Do you mean the table decoration?" Toby responds mechanically, shoveling sugar into her mug and then stirring it leisurely with the spoon. He keeps down what he would much rather say to her, keeps down his impromptu desire to flee, and adds, "Yeah, that was really corny."

"You know damn well what I mean."

"Do I?"

"We kissed," she states, and the lucid exasperation in her voice, the graspable _despair_ , is enough to force a reaction out of him; he spins around in a half-circle to face her, brows drawn together, insides clenching, mind going empty, not knowing where this is going – _really bad idea_ – which road she is planning on taking them on. "We kissed, and we probably would've done a lot more if… so are we ever going to talk about that?"

"I thought…" With a drawn-out sigh, he briefly lapses into silence (passionately clings to it like a lifeline as memories invade his head, memories of last Saturday and then memories of before that too, as he) looks off to the right, notices her yet again firmly crossed arms from the corner of his eye and quickly decides to follow suit. "I thought you didn't want to talk about it."

"When did I say that?" she questions, staring mostly at his cheek. "When?"

"You acted like everything was fine-"

"Only because _you_ ignored me for days, and I thought-"

"Yeah, well, so did you-"

"I didn't," she slices into his accusation coolly, relenting only when he curves his eyebrow. "All right. Fine. I _did_ ignore you. But now I'm not, so are we ever going to talk about it?"

"I don't… I don't know what you want me to say," he counters and rubs his forehead (as though in a stupid attempt to somehow rub unwelcome, unwanted thoughts out of it but, as he probably should have expected already, it's fruitless: first it's ' _really bad idea_ ' playing on an endless loop in his ears, and it's the feel of her skin underneath his palms that keeps returning to taunt him, and it's the sweet taste of her muffled approval blown into his willing mouth that he remembers, doesn't know how to forget and maybe never has).

"Honestly, I don't know what I want you to say either," she replies softly and frowns some more like she had hoped that he would take the lead. "I don't even know what I want _me_ to say. I just, I want to talk about it. I feel like this is something that we should talk about."

"I, I, I don't know." He stutters, stumbles over his words like a fucking idiot and deeply breathes in to regain tranquility or at least a caricature of it. "I don't know if I'm supposed to apologize-"

"Why would you apologize?"

"Because… I don't know." Slouching against the fridge, he palms his chin and his mouth, half-concealing the truth ( _again? still?_ ) but then, then he meets her honest, open gaze across the tiny kitchen. They are incredibly trusting, her beautiful eyes, way more trusting than he feels like he currently deserves, and he can't disappoint her ( _again? still?_ ), can't _lie_ to her face ( _again? still?_ ) when she is standing right there, waiting for him to carry on, to give meaning. He finds calm in seemingly never-ending depths of brown, finds sudden _bravery_ too, and suddenly finds himself admitting, "I don't regret it. I don't regret the kiss. And right now, I have no idea if _you_ regret it. Because if you do, then I'll have to apologize. So do you _want_ me to apologize? I mean, you, you act like nothing happened and you said it'd be a really bad idea and-"

"Because it _would_ be. Okay?" Spencer releases a heavy, heavy breath, fingers combing through her bangs, and he feels strangely six years ago, as though they are discussing a decaying future and the fate of a nonexistent baby which turned out to be a late period and what ultimately broke for good what Charlotte, Mona and Rosewood itself hadn't achieved. "I'm sorry, but the way it all happened, it absolutely would have been a terrible idea."

Toby snorts through the ache scattering all over. "Okay. We moved from 'really bad' to ' _terrible_ idea'. All right."

"You're not listening."

"I _am_ listening."

"Well, you're not _hearing_ then," she insists, shaking her head. "It's been six years, Toby. I don't regret it. I don't regret anything that happened that night even though I know I probably should, but it's been _six_ years, okay? I just, I just feel like we deserve better than to… than to _fuck_ it out against my living room wall. We deserve way more than that."

Regarding her – her eyes are alert though swimming in distress, and there are mere feet between them though they feel like miles – he crafts this painting where he falls down to his knees, begs the world for another chance, where they reach eventual catharsis unharmed, where things are easy and their history doesn't ache as much as it does, but despite the vibrant colors poking at his inner eye, despite the shapes and lines becoming alive in his quiet, all that will slip from his mouth is a desperate-sounding confession that would have tumbled onto the floor had she not reacted fast enough and managed to catch it inside her palms.

"I love you," he says – simple, like it's the most natural thing in the world.

And her eyes, her eyes are still refusing to release the bittersweet anguish that they are holding captive, even when she takes a second to accept into her heart his first words of utter truth, gaze briefly widening in surprise, then growing soft once more. Finally, she says, all while attempting the tiniest yet weakest of smiles, "I know."

"I love you so much," he carries on, part of him quick to point out that the strange feeling within him hasn't faded, part of him quick to push that observation out of reach. "And I don't… I don't know if I ever stopped or, or if I ended up falling for you again because I have no idea what it's like to be with you and _not_ love you, but I do. I love you, Spencer."

"I love you too," she echoes in the gentlest tone, gradually lowering her head to the floor (like she can't bear to look at him any longer when they are still separated by countless words unsaid, by distance untraveled, by endings unwritten) and though he becomes aware of the brief twinge of happiness, _genuine_ happiness, stirring in his left, it's not quite the brilliant ecstasy, the needed resolution he had anticipated to obtain. It occurs to him, then, that he had never allowed himself to consciously ponder this very moment. He had gone through many a dramatic declaration of love in his fantasies, daydreamed about life together once the storm settles, constructed various potential futures they could have, but never had he hesitated and sat down to wonder how they would get there. It had always seemed like an afterthought, like something that would happen on its own, just like _they_ had so naturally the first time: kisses and a heartfelt confession or perhaps confessions first, followed by heartfelt kisses. The stark contrast between the fantasy world, the ideal he has built (a happy-go-lucky version of what could be) and reality (the way it is, the way it was born out of mutual and individual hurt over the years) is sobering.

"I'm scared," Toby tells the kitchen floor.

"I'm fucking terrified," Spencer tells the stain on the wall over his head and emits a dry chuckle which, he has to admit, sounds real enough. "And the fact that this isn't going the way I thought it would, doesn't exactly help."

"I loved you more than anything. Six years ago," he begins meekly, scratching his chin. "Even when… even when I fucked up. Even after we broke up."

"I never doubted that." Disbelieving, he just – he just _stares_ until she squares her shoulders and lifts the corner of her mouth into a sarcastic half-smirk (in surrender). "Okay. There _were_ times where I might have doubted that, but retrospectively-"

"No, not 'retrospectively'. What if it happens again?" She picks up her mug, blows a tired sigh into her coffee, and he speaks into the kitchen, brows furrowed, tone quiet, as though convinced he will unintentionally tear through the vulnerable, open space between their bodies should he proclaim it too boldly or too loudly, "What if my love isn't enough? What if _love_ isn't enough, period? I mean, it obviously wasn't enough last time." After holding back his words for so long, they are seemingly impossible to stop now; they flow from his mouth and he doesn't even know whether exorcising his fears is going to do them any good. "What if I hurt you again, Spencer? What if end up breaking your heart, _again_ , by being incredibly stupid?"

"Why do you _always_ act like you were the only reason we didn't work out?"

"Because if we don't work out _this_ time, I just know it'll be my fault," he says, holding her stare and ignoring the dull ache in his guts. "I've hurt you more times than I can possibly count."

Spencer snorts. "Yeah, no, this is still a two-way street. I've made a fair share of mistakes. From 'screwing up everything' to 'making stuff infinitely worse' to 'lying' and 'cheating'."

Wordlessly, he watches her with a pained expression and a pained heart as she wipes at her eyes and wordlessly, he raises his arms a bit, offering sanctuary, and wordlessly yet again, he smooths his surprise when she decides to take it, promptly marches over to him, leans into his side, her head finding comfort against his shoulder. He coils his arms around her frame.

"Are we horrible people? Is that why this is happening?" she wonders, her tone weary. "Because when I thought about this moment, we were actually _happy_ , and I, I don't feel very happy right now. Where do we go from here, Toby?"

"I don't know," he mumbles sincerely. The utter absurdity of their situation, however, is nearly enough to make him slide into laughter. She _is_ right (and come to think about it, she always is, isn't she); it wasn't supposed to go down this way. He muses, with a little frown, that there must be another version of them somewhere that has most likely skipped this throbbing part of the conversation, hurriedly moved onto taking off clothes and climbing into sheets, and a different version of them has perhaps jogged through this talk while sporting smiles of total confidence, and yet they are _this_ version right here, and it's this version that is still being circled by doubts and worries, paralyzed by what might go wrong instead of celebrating what wouldn't. Internally scowling, he firmly tells himself to stop continuously _fleeing_ reality and repeats, "I don't know, Spence. What… what do _you_ wanna do?"

Again, she snorts. "Well, depends. Do you want me to be honest or do you want me to lie?"

"Honest."

"I want to be with you," she admits in a whisper several tense beats later, and his hand, stroking her arm, comes to an abrupt, startling halt. He had tried bracing himself for a different kind of answer, a different kind of sensation jumping him at her words, and so, for a second and a half, he finds himself defenseless in her truth. He proceeds to stare at her profile with his reply stuck inside his throat like it is more than intent on staying there for good, ridiculously in love with a woman who is braver than he could ever be, and Spencer isn't returning his gaze but then again, he hadn't expected her to. It's too vulnerable a moment, the intimacy and their closeness too raw. Too _real_.

"I want a future together and figure out what that's going to entail." Sighing, she breaks off for a second, two seconds, three seconds to rest her palm on his chest, calming his trembling heart (like she had done last Saturday, but it feels different now; _they_ feel different now). "This is the first time in years that I'm actually, _actively_ trying to get my shit together and be happy instead of surviving another miserable month and I want to share that. I want to share that with _you_."

"For what it's worth, I _do_ want the same thing, you know? I want a life with you and everything that comes with it." Gently, Toby falls quiet as he twirls a strand of brown hair around his finger and then adds, although he is aware that he perhaps shouldn't be saying aloud what he can tell from her scrunched-up features she is also relentlessly stewing over, "But that's what we wanted last time too… and look where we ended up."

As if on cue, she begins chewing on her thumbnail. Against his will, and horribly inappropriate too, a little smile creeps into Toby's face. "I just…I'm sorry but I really wanna laugh right now."

"Hm?"

Spencer shrugs. "I was convinced that saying 'I love you' again would be the only hard part but now I realize that I spent _weeks_ freaking out over practically nothing when I should have been preparing myself for this conversation instead. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic."

"Yeah, we have a thing for the dramatics, huh?" he responds warmly, tossing her the same smile that is still plastered over his face when she raises her head somewhat to look at him.

Though she reciprocates it, returns it easily, her eyes and lowered voice turn somber with what she asks next. "Do you think we're a lost cause?"

Toby shakes his head. "No."

"No?" Making a sound that is halfway between sarcastic chuckle and snort, she knits her brows together accusatorily. "You're supposed to say things the way they are," she remarks as she then untangles herself from Toby, unbothered when her absence noticeably fills him with a slight yet crushing shiver. She wraps her arms around her torso. "Not what you _think_ I want to hear."

"When have I ever told you something just because it was what you wanted to hear?"

"I don't know." She pulls up her shoulders. "It's probably happened before."

"Well, maybe it has, but that's not what's happening now. I don't think we're a lost cause." Only after the sentence has succeeded in wiggling out of his mouth, Toby understands how true it is; there aren't many things, he recognizes, that he could speak openly with the same conviction currently awakening. "I'm… I mean, we're actually talking right now. And we actually stopped before we could do anything reckless last Saturday. Which is more than you can say for us, six years ago."

He has this fantasy where their galaxies clash and stars are reborn; and he has this fantasy where they get caught in another whirlwind romance, another set of unstable theatrics with dramatic speeches given (in the middle of town, a rundown diner, the Hastings' living room) and dramatic gestures made (in front of her house, intertwined into false promises of loyalty to Mona, left on her kitchen counter) in an attempt to erase the endless pain he has caused, in an attempt to prove his endless love and dedication; and he has this fantasy where they left her dorm that day, hand in hand, heart in heart, and somehow survived.

With a low groan rumbling in the back of his throat, Toby pushes them away, squeezes his eyes shut for a beat or so and luckily, it works (for a beat or so). "I don't wanna be friends," he admits to her quietly, sinking his gaze (in shame) to inspect his shoelaces. Curiously, she glances at his cheek. "Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather, I'd much rather pretend that none of this happened and continue being your friend than lose you for good but I'm, this entire friends thing? I don't think that was a good idea, to be honest."

"I know." Spencer produces a slight laugh that transforms into a faint sniffle. "You were right. I should've listened to you."

Hesitantly, he puts his hand on her shoulder. She lets him. "I'm glad you didn't."

"Me too." She turns to look at him from under her lashes in silent wonder. Once more hesitant but mostly bold (enough) under her scrutiny, under the affection, devotion, the softness rising in her glance like the sun, he takes the hand on her shoulder and goes to cup her cheek. Warmth flows through his veins, melts away his fears, when she all but intuitively leans into his palm.

"Look at us, we're a mess," he tells her, half-smirking rather self-deprecatingly. "We didn't only complicate our friendship. We even managed to somehow complicate… _this_."

"Let me unravel it then," she responds, copying his smirk, one hand over his hand (and yet one invisible hand over his heart). "You love me. I love you. We both want a life together and we're both fucking terrified. How's that? Did I get everything?"

"I think that's about it. That's where we're at right now."

"Mhm." Tilting her head to the side, she looks at him like she isn't sure whether she is supposed to laugh or cry and oddly enough, Toby feels the same. "So what do we do now?"

_What do we do now_?

He has this fantasy where they find a map to their own happily ever after and sadness becomes a distant faraway memory whose distinct taste they learn to forget; and he has this fantasy where they leave Massachusetts and move onto unknown worlds that their demons can't follow them to; and he has this fantasy where they build a house on clouds and grow love like pretty flowers and prettier trees in their garden… but when Spencer tenderly pulls him down to her level, rests her forehead against his, her eyelids fluttering shut as she exhales a shaky breath he feels on his skin, they disappear, fade into oblivion. Lightly, he frames her face with his hands, his fingertips digging into the back of her neck desperately, and releases his breath too, releases his dread into the void of yesterday.

_What do we do now_?

Suddenly stripped bare, with their doubts, their dreams, their countless fantasy worlds removed, hastily shrugged off, like items of clothing bunched around their feet, it's reality that they have to confront now, it's reality that they have to call home now, and it's in reality, Toby adds, that they are just that: two people terribly in love who want to be terribly happy.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"We'll make it work this time."

"Okay."

"It'll be different this time."

Six years of hopeless yearning start crumbling, and six years of hopeless dreams find their death when Toby leans in, brushes his mouth against hers; and a future, a new future, a different future that is yet to be woven, yet to be fully constructed together, is what replaces them when Spencer breathes through her tears or his tears or _their_ tears and kisses him back.

"We'll be happier this time."

A slow, certain, trusting nod. "We'll be happier this time."

And somehow, somehow that's enough.


	4. Chapter 4

IV.  
And I'll be yours  
Until the stars fall from the sky

So she weeps.

And eventually, as the minutes drift into endless hours drift into a steady flow like waterfalls in the mountains…and eventually, as time passes on like nothing of importance has happened, and her trembling hiccups are more or less the only sounds filling the silence of this peaceful place that they have crafted together, a dose of awareness begins washing over her just like her tears are washing over him in tender baptism, hallowing them and everything that they are: she isn't certain what exactly she is spilling her cries over. Maybe relief at being granted another chance or possibly regret for a love that had fallen apart so, so many years ago. Perhaps, however, it is sorrow overcoming her as she ponders the carefree life a much younger version of her had continuously daydreamed about, had thought she would one day hold inside her grasp and yet never got the opportunity to live and happily explore to its fullest, to its richest, to its brightest.

But whatever the real cause may be – and there _are_ way too many scenarios, too many reasons and solutions and way too many answers to consider, aren't there – weep she does.

Oddly enough, it's a deeply emotional – and she almost wants to say – _religious_ experience: the tears fall from her with ease, and each quivering breath that she exhales into the fabric of Toby's shirt starts taking down the walls of her fears sitting apprehensively inside her head – _but what if we don't make it? again?_ – of her doubts twirling and twirling – _but what if we do? how's that not even scarier?_ – of her anxieties cackling at her out-of-place, out-of-character optimism – _to be honest, I didn't think I'd_ make _it to twenty-six one day and now I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to be doing with all the years I've lost and wasted_ – of her mind challenging her to just give up, to hide herself from the world and, more importantly, hide herself from _him_ too. She carefully speaks her truths into his chest, wonders aloud, frowns and sighs, willingly opens her heart wide to his curious yet incredibly affectionate gaze, like she had wanted to, like she is hoping their scars will fade into oblivion once they have managed to stop scratching at them.

They lie in bed, her cautious ear pressed against his left, listening to his heart composing songs and gentle melodies back at her, and they lie in bed, his worried ear pressed against her darkness, listening to thoughts she had attempted to bury.

When nighttime arrives, turning the light into shadows and the shadows into comfort, she draws together her eyebrows, becomes pensive in his devotion, though half-grateful too that she can't quite make out his features from the awkward position that they are in, and confesses. Confesses about feelings almost but not entirely shaken off, about craving a _break_ , about wanting nothing more than to disappear for good… so many poetic words for such an ugly desire, she thinks in silence, in _bitterness_ too, so many big words for such an ugly, ugly disease – "Not like… I never planned anything or, or, _did_ anything," she hastily continues before he can catch her quiet and squeeze in a reply that she knows will make her heart ache, before it can dawn on her that she has somehow tricked herself into throwing away the memories of the light post. "It's just… it's just, sometimes, I'd have these days where I said to myself, well, if I die today, like, on my way to work or something? That wouldn't be too awful. I thought, there isn't anything left for me to do here anyway. Nothing much to look forward to. Nothing to get excited about anymore."

She says, "I didn't… I didn't think about you all the time or anything but when I did? I'd make sure it hurt. A lot. I don't even know why. I'd sit on my stupid fire escape for _hours_ straight and think about you and Yvonne and your stupid cottage on your stupid island, being stupid happy and in love." She says, "I think convincing myself that you were happy and, and _so much_ better off without me in your life to ruin shit. Without someone who actively hurt you and lied to you so many times. I think convincing myself of all that, it helped me at least _try_ to make sense and make peace with moving on from wishing that things between us had happened… had happened differently." She says, "The only constant in my life for so fucking long was _you._ The only real thing when everything else around me regularly came crashing down and tore me apart. Losing that and losing _you_ and more or less accepting the fact that you'd fallen out of love with me and then managed to find love in someone else instead… it kind of made me believe that I was, you know, that I was completely unlovable? If someone with a heart like yours couldn't even bring himself to love me, to want me, to be with me, then who possibly would?" She says, "You make everything feel so damn easy. Loving you is so, so easy."

He tells her about life on autopilot, about crushing cold taking over where once his big, precious heart lived before Maine, before D.C, about numbness whose taste she knows better than herself – "On most days, I felt like I was in a play. I felt like I had this perfect script that I was supposed to be reading from and Yvonne was in the audience, judging my performance. Making sure it's, I don't know, authentic enough to pass," he whispers, voice laced with guilt, fingers laced with hers. She grips them tight. Doesn't let go. "And I _knew_ , on some level, I totally knew that it was wrong. That _I_ was wrong. I _knew_ that it wasn't where I was meant to be, but I had no idea where or _what_ home even was, so I kept… I kept going? I thought, if I pretend to be happy, maybe I'll actually be happy too, one day in the future. It's so fucking stupid, looking back at it now. ' _Fake it till you make it_ '. As though you can successfully fake an entire relationship. I really have no idea what I was thinking. Or rather, why I wasn't thinking at all."

He says, "I'd dream about you. Sometimes, you'd just be there, telling me things I wasn't ready to admit to myself. Sometimes, I didn't get to see your face, but I knew it was you and then I'd spend the whole night searching for you. Just to, just to actually _see_ you one last time. Just to get something that looked like closure. And sometimes, we'd… we'd make love and I'd wake up next to Yvonne the next morning and be forced to act like I wasn't a despicable human being for doing that to her over and over." He says, "I'm _so_ fucking good at constantly running away from shit that I never realized how quickly I had buried everything I _still_ felt for you until you showed up with Caleb. I never fully dealt with it or got over it, I think. I mean, it's not like I didn't talk about it. I talked about it. About us. Plenty. But on an emotional level? I don't think I understood that this was it. For good. And then you two started dating and it hurt but I wanted nothing more than for things to work out between you 'cuz if you could move on, if you could leave what we had behind, then perhaps that meant I could do the same." He says, "Even when nothing in my life makes a lick of sense, somehow, it's _you_ who always does."

She talks about the topic of confidence and self-worth in passing, like it's an afterthought, only it isn't, not really – "I'm aware that this has always been _blatantly_ obvious to everyone but me, but it took me basically forever to figure out that I'm self-destructive as hell. It's like part of me thinks that I don't _deserve_ genuine happiness," she goes on, eyebrows furrowed yet shamelessly reveling in the warmth of his hand holding the back of her neck as he massages away the tension their mutual whispers have brought into the room. "I latched onto awful men and then wondered why I was _so_ empty all the time. I latched onto horrible jobs and then wondered why I felt like a disappointment. And I latched onto nicotine and booze and told myself over and over that it's _so_ not a bad coping mechanism everyone at NA would rightfully berate me for because, hey, at least it's not hard drugs again, right?"

She says, "God, back in Chicago, I dated this guy for a bit – technically, he was my coworker, and he, uh, he was studying architecture at Illinois Tech. Had these… these _gorgeous_ blue eyes. Really loved his bike. I mean, _really_ loved his bike. Pretty sure he loved that thing more than he ever liked me. Oh, and did I mention that he was hardcore into indie rock? Yeah, moving on _my ass_." He says, "Emily accused me of sulking after I moved to Boston and practically forced me to go on a date with one of her friend's friend's friends. Nothing serious or anything. Just a couple of dates, you know. She was funny. Anyway, this one time, we go see some new movie, have drinks afterwards, and we're just making conversation, right, and I have no idea how much Em actually told her, but all of the sudden, she asks me about, uh, 'the breakup', how serious it was, how long it's been, that type of thing. Guess who thought of _you_ first and Yvonne second? Yeah."

He proceeds to undress his secrets for her, lays them out one by one, his regrets first, folded in a pile by their feet, his remorse second, then his utter shame too, as she strokes her greedy hands down his warm skin, fingers busy drawing shapes – "I thought distraction would help. So I tried to keep myself busy all the time. So that I wouldn't have to… so that I wouldn't have to _think_ , you know? I put on a smile every day. Faked enthusiasm. Pretended that I absolutely _loved_ this new life we were working towards," he mutters, allowing her to hug him even closer and closer to her body. "I basically…set myself on fire just to keep her warm, but she'd never even asked me to do that. I lost myself when we left Rosewood and another chunk when we arrived on the island. I don't know who I am anymore, Spence. I have no fucking clue. But when…when I'm with _you_ , that realization doesn't seem scary. You make me feel like I'll figure it out someday. You make me feel like I can do anything if I want to. And I want to. I really, really want to."

"We're kinda screwed up, aren't we," Spencer carelessly blurs into the silence much later, after everything that needed so desperately to be voiced has been thrown into the room unprompted; after everything she had kept bottled inside and swallowed and pushed away has reached a state of light and promises, has blinded her fears.

She feels him laugh slightly, his hand finding its way back into her hair. "Yeah. Kind of."

"Are you sure you still want to do this?" she inquires, tilting her head to the side in order to see his pretty face a bit better, in order not to say, in order not to – _you sure you still want_ me? _After all that? After everything I just said now? After everything I confessed to you?_

But he knows. He always knows. She doesn't say it and he understands anyway.

"Spence," Toby begins, brushing her bangs from her sweaty forehead, his eyes focused entirely on hers even in the utter dark, even in this space still occupied by the shameful leftovers of their words and secrets long overdue. Unhurriedly, he cradles her flushed cheek in his hand, and for the first time free from the clouds of doom that could or might or would bring thunder and rain to tear down what they are building if they are not watchful enough, she allows herself to _really_ feel the butterflies in her stomach fluttering north, transforming into sunshine. "There is nothing in the world that I want more than this."

But she knows. She always does. It's _so_ damn easy, loving him, like she had said before; it's so easy, making sense of life when he is right there, his heart beating tenderly against hers, finding a clear rhythm together, making her feel like she could move mountains if she attempted to. It's so easy now to see the truth. He doesn't say it, doesn't say what he had actually meant – _nothing in the world that I want more than_ you – but she understands anyway. A different thing that she can understand now, in the embrace of his arms, of the hopeful future: they aren't _close to_ or an _almost_ , not even a meek little _nearly_. They just _are_. Perfect, that is.

She awakens the following morning like she had passed out the previous night: face half-hidden in his skin, eyes mostly swollen (and extraordinarily puffy), exposed leg thrown over his hip in an attempt to crawl closer into him. She awakens the next day like she had fallen asleep about five hours ago: calm, _home_ , at peace in the blazing warmth of him.

_Huh_.

She pries one eye open.

Which, now that she thinks about it, _might_ be a little weird though, right, she interrupts herself, throws in suddenly, forced wide awake as she draws back her head. After all, she _has_ spent most of the last something-something years doing virtually nothing but cry her pathetic heart out over every silly little thing – last night's (if she has to be honest, _embarrassing_ ) emotional breakdown shouldn't feel much different than all of her previous escalations (tantrums, spirals, fiascos and perhaps failures) combined. And yet, for some reason… exhaling a sigh, she stops herself before she can go on building crumbling castles in the sky. She knows it has to be a fleeting moment of clarity – _actually, scratch that out_ , she cuts off her ramblings once more. She is quite certain, in fact, that it really is merely a fleeting moment, more than certain that something, anything – the next punch, the next wave of misery, _boo fucking hoo_ – is unquestionably wheezing behind her shoulder, getting ready to tackle her when she is least expecting it. Nobody beats 'moderate to severe depression' in a day and a half, and happiness, as life has made sure to teach her more than once, is not exactly a state of mind she is allowed to achieve and _keep_ too.

And yet… and yet…

Ever so carefully, she musters up her courage to raise her gaze and fully look at him (part of her half-afraid, naturally, that he is going to dissolve if she glances at him too long). Toby, however, and like she had already determined from his steady breath against her forehead, is still happily snoozing away. An involuntary giggle threatens to sneak past her mouth when her eyes fall onto his lips that are sort of puckered up into that tiny pout she had nearly but not really forgotten he does whenever he is asleep. Quickly pushing down her reaction so as not to wake him from his peaceful slumber, she extends one thoughtful finger to trace his jaw, extra mindful not to apply too much pressure. _So this is what genuine optimism feels like_. She hesitates for a second, runs her finger across his cheek, thumb first inspecting and then poking at his pout as a smile takes over her features in confidence.

She is in the middle of joyfully watching, looking, regarding, _staring_ (and perhaps there is some more gentle touching, stroking and playful poking as well) at what she can make out of his face in the shadows of his apartment – it does occur to her that some would probably call it _creepily_ but, really, it's not like she can help it – when the first of many alarms goes off on the nightstand beside Toby's bed.

"Crap _._ "

She frantically sits up, trying to locate her phone in the dark and turn it _off_ already, accidentally knocking over what she presumes must be a heavy book in the process, at least judging by the not-so-gentle thud it causes when it brusquely collides with the floor. Almost right on cue, Toby stirs behind her and emits a low, half-irritated groan. Grimacing – _flinching_ – at her own fucking clumsiness, Spencer at last manages to shut up her phone's irksome blaring (and turns off the next few alarms as well) though it's no use. 5:30 in the morning and they are both up now…and so are likely all of his neighbors. She scrunches up her nose.

" _Ugh_."

"Mmm… Spence?"

"I'm _so_ sorry," she mutters meekly, giving an annoyed grunt at her phone and throwing it back on the nightstand without preamble. "Should've turned it off last night. Fucking useless thing."

"'s okay. Don't worry about it." Spencer feels the mattress shift under his weight and turns back around, somehow suppressing her worried frown. He is resting on his back, innocently rubbing his weary eyes, definitely awake (and definitely… god, she nearly _hates_ it; she isn't the type to get nauseatingly cutesy, but he definitely looks fucking adorable, lying right there, with his hair sticking out in every direction known to mankind, and his eyes all small and confused and very childlike, and that stupid pout refusing to accept that it's morning now). "D'you have to go?"

"Not yet," she tells him, assures him and simultaneously assures _herself_. Truthfully, though, she should be getting ready: there is virtually no way she is going to make it to work on time if she spends even another minute in bed. She needs to take a brisk shower, try to tame the bird's nest that unapologetically calls itself her hair without the help of her flat iron, hope for the best and prepare for the worst while she puts on a face in her car, construct a convoluted yet convincing explanation as to why she is in the same clothes from the day before, just in case Oxana from Controlling decides to ask, wink, wink, nudge, nudge…yeah, well, needless to say, that _was_ her plan until Toby chooses that second to gift her an unmistakably giddy smile at her response and all her rationale hops off the mattress, makes a run for the window and abandons them both.

And that's the exact moment that Spencer realizes that she is going to be way too sick to return to Worcester today. Flu season and all. Just a terrible, terrible cold. Headache too. No, _migraine_ , it's just so horrible. All she needs is a good day's rest and she will be back tomorrow morning.

Shrugging off her responsibilities, and making a mental note to text her boss, she simply slides back between Toby's legs, folds her arms on his chest and puts her chin on top of them, widened gaze searching his. His hand, meanwhile, appearing to accept the cold, hard fact that any attempt to comb his fingers through her waves is going to be a hopeless cause, opts for merely stroking over them, fingers then running down her spine at an excruciatingly slow pace and coming to a rest on her lower back.

"I could make breakfast," he offers, voice hoarse, laced with sleep and a hint of something else.

That is definitely the very, _very_ last thing on her mind right now.

"Yeah… actually, I don't really 'do' breakfast," she informs him matter-of-factly, inching a tad closer to him and closer again, parts of her (not so) innocently and (not so) accidentally brushing against parts of him. _A rather weak attempt at seduction_ , she comments, immediately followed by an internal wince at her choice of words – _seduction? really?_ – as she silently, secretly, subtly tries to maneuver both her legs on either side of him without him noticing ( _much_ , that is; without him _judging_ much too). Toby's other hand, his free hand, suddenly begins an elaborate, languid journey down her waist, touching and caressing and silencing any and every thought process in her empty mind as it glides farther down until it reaches her hip. _Oh_ , she nearly says out loud, just _oh_. She clears her throat soundly, miserably failing at keeping her composure. Feigning an air of nonchalance regardless, she continues, "Sometimes, I'll buy a bagel on my way to work, but normally, it's just a cup of coffee and a couple of cigarettes for me."

"I make a mean omelet, honestly," he presses on, his delicate hands holding onto her hips as she further relaxes in his lap, standing in stark contrast to his tone remaining completely calm, casual, neutral. She has no idea what quickens first, her breathing or her heartbeat, like it is on a mission to locate a way to break her ribs, but what she knows is that it's terribly distracting. And _loud_. She has a hard time thinking straight. She has a hard time thinking at all.

"I remember."

"So how about that with some toast?"

Instead of answering his well-meant inquiry, she brushes her mouth against the side of his face, against his jaw, against his neck even. Had she felt this nervous when they kissed in the middle of her living room? When her mind had gone completely numb and the only thoughts occupying her head were of his hands – his _beautiful hands_ – carelessly lighting her ablaze and drawing a thousand burning suns all over her trembling body? When the only images flashing behind her closed eyelids were of all the ridiculously complicated – ridiculously _fun_ – ways she hoped they would eventually devour each other?

She doesn't quite remember. He hasn't kissed her yet, hasn't even _tried_ to kiss her, and in some ways, this feels realer. More definite. More… more intimate? (And, and– god, somehow, it feels _scarier_ too; it's been so long, so fucking long, and nothing about her still looks twenty like in his memory. Nothing about her, if she has to be honest, face the truth and all, nothing about her resembles the girl that would gasp for breath and gasp for _him_ underneath his body, save for the eyes, maybe, save for the shadows on her face. She is half-scared to death that she is going to… going to chase him off like a wild animal, not with the depths of her pain she had spoken aloud just for him, not even with the depths of her love she has eagerly given him, over and over, but with the depths of her desire. She – she wants him _so_ much, and it's scary, _scarier_ , the fact that he can still make her feel this way, make her feel this way again, make her feel this way at all.)

"I could make waffles too," he goes on and she is relieved to find his voice strained, his breath labored, high on the same sort of want that is pushing her stomach into somersaults. "Or I could, I could make pancakes, actually. I just want you to eat. Breakfast's the most important meal of the day, y'know."

She kisses his cheek, noisily exhaling out against his skin. "Says who?"

"Says I."

She leans in to plant another kiss on his cheek, revel in and marvel at the way it feels under her lips, a little foreign and yet so familiar at the same time, like a lost memory, like an old memory, like a new memory to be made and looked back on. The way his four- or perhaps it's already a five-day stubble prickles against her mouth, her bottom lip, and it's a look she thinks suits him well; mature, weirdly masculine, the exhaustion, the slight _messiness_ of it carrying the days and nights he slaved and slaved away on her desk, the desk he is building her. That fucking gorgeous desk she can't wait to take home (just like she is planning on welcoming, no, guiding him back home and god, there she goes again, being too direct, _too much_ , but who can blame her?). Toby, though, he turns his head to the side before she can kiss his cheek fully – _talk about seduction_ , her inner voice mumbles – and then there they are, nose against nose (his lips inches away from hers, the perfect temptation). His eyes are deliciously unfocused and yet easily, _so easily_ , staring into hers (into her soul, she almost remarks, into her very being). She is still fully clothed – one of his shirts loosely circling her frame, his boxers loosely hugging her hips, threatening to come off and why aren't they? – but she doesn't think she has ever felt this exposed before.

"I don't want breakfast," she confesses so quietly she nearly doesn't hear it herself.

He hums, his curious gaze dropping to her mouth as she wets her lower lip, semi-contemplative, no, _faux_ -contemplative, and her heart drops too. He doesn't bother concealing the similar drop of his tone when he asks without really asking anything, "So what do you want then?"

_Oh_ , Spencer thinks again, thinks in a haze as she breathes him in, palm touching where his heart is, _a great, great number of things_. First and foremost: she wants to kiss him. Celebrate this new day, celebrate the sunrise attempting to peek through the blinds, celebrate new beginnings with his tongue running along her lower lip and expertly parting her mouth, getting lost in her, getting lost with her, getting lost against hers. She wants to be oh-so-lazy, take her time undressing him, get rid of his shirt, his pants, his underwear, feel his weight in her palm, his warm skin pressed against hers, his body tremble beneath her (or perhaps above her, she isn't picky). She wants to feel his fingers explore her in that tender way he always used to but gradually grow more urgent, more desperate and greedier too with each passing breath. She wants to show him, teach him in a _seductive_ –ugh– whisper what she has discovered about herself over the many years they were apart, over the many years he hasn't witnessed her at her most vulnerable, at her most intimate, and her most powerful too, and then simply dissolve in just as many whimpers, in just as many drawn-out moans when he reads her like an open book, when he just _knows_ , all but instinctively, where and how and when to touch before her brain can fully catch up.

So Spencer just – so Spencer just _does_. She can't tell with certainty who initiates it, who finally closes the gap between them. Perhaps it's her, her and her heart overflowing with love, or maybe it's him, him and his shuddering, sugar-sweet breath tasting like devotion, or possibly it's them, both of then, them and all their missed opportunities, all their 'almost's and all their 'what if's, them and their brand new day, them and their rediscovered sanguinity. But their lips meet softly, meet _again_ , like they had the previous night, only without the fears of the future blinding their vision, because this time, in their place, there is love – _only_ love, _only_ them. She decides to take it, embraces their happiness, their joy, carefully puts her hand over his when he goes to cup her cheek, exhales a drunken giggle into his mouth at his apparent eagerness, at her heart fluttering like crazy.

"In _my_ fantasies," Spencer whispers, her forehead touching his in between kisses, a gentle smile tugging at the corner of her lips when he begins nuzzling her nose. His eyes, his pretty eyes, are alight, shimmering, burning with desire; her favorite shade of blue. "I could actually _see_ you."

Her traitorous eyelids flutter closed almost of their own accord as he trails his mouth down her willing neck, nibbling at her skin playfully. He reaches for the blinds with his free hand, opens them just a bit, biting down where her neck meets her shoulder, and she, she doesn't respond – couldn't respond even if she wanted to, really – but her resulting moan must have been mostly articulate, vibrating her approval into his ear, since he emits a pleased half-grunt of his own into her skin, tilts up her chin and captures her waiting mouth in his again. A moment or some later, he flips them without warning, the noisy mattress bouncing under her weight, the air bouncing from her lungs. Then Toby says, an innocent mumble by her neck as though he isn't fully aware of what his voice does to her, "Well, but in _my_ fantasies, we were kinda like this."

_We'll see about that_.

"All right," Spencer answers, gives in anyhow, reminds herself that she is not picky. She sends him a smirk, foot lightly shoving at his chest to keep him at a safe distance. "But in _my_ fantasies, you definitely weren't wearing so many clothes."

Briefly distracted from their banter (briefly breaking character, that is), Toby pulls an anxious grimace, hand petting her ankle, and looks down at her, a worried chuckle filling the room that she can tell he tries his best to keep at bay but doesn't manage to. "Y'know, in _my_ fantasies, I wasn't this nervous either, to be honest."

"Tell me about it." She runs her quick fingers through her hair that has begun curling at the ends and meet his chuckle halfway, adding a snicker or two for good measure. "It's been… a while."

He helps her sit back up, holding onto her arms, beckoning her closer. "Six year's a long time."

"No. I mean… I mean, yeah, it is. But that's not what I meant."

"Oh." Toby tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear, regarding her eyes. "Yeah. Me too."

She gives another laugh, a tense sort-of-giggle jumping off the walls, raises her chin, gazing up at him from under her eyelashes cautiously. "Well, that's comforting at least."

"So?"

"So…?"

"Slow?" he inquires in a gentle voice, seemingly pretending not to notice her fingers stubbornly tugging at the hem of his shirt.

"Slow."

_Slowly_ , he leans in again to kiss her. His tongue _slowly_ slipping into her mouth to _slowly_ caress hers as her hands very _slowly_ slither under his pesky shirt, fingernails (admittedly not so) _slowly_ scratching at his stomach and whatever she can reach. And Toby, he _slowly_ takes it off, quirking his eyebrow at her, and uses their brief time apart to _slowly_ take off her shirt too – his, his head _slowly_ dipping to brush his mouth over her collarbone, like he is intentionally teasing her, teeth _slowly_ exploring her exposed skin, tongue _slowly_ exploring her exposed chest all over, and she _slowly_ reaches for the waistband of his pants, because he _slowly_ reaches inside hers, acting way more confident than she knows, _knows_ , he is feeling under the layers of make-believe cockiness, acting more confident than she had thought, fantasized, she would be, and she exhales a breath, presses her mouth against his shoulder, _slowly_ , presses her whimper against his shoulder, _slowly_ , loses her mind, _slowly_ —

They slip and stumble, then leap headfirst into a certain synchronicity only ancient lovers would recognize, a dance older than modern society, a certain – _what's the word_ , she thinks, and thinks, and she can't think at all, not with his fingers, one, two, calloused from working on the fucking gorgeous desk for sure, applying _just_ the right amount of pressure to guide her close enough to the edge so she can once more fall in love with the idea of falling, and _oh, that's familiar_ , she notes, lightheaded, he had always been big on foreplay, hadn't he – so they fall into a, a certain pattern – _right, that's the word_ , she thinks, and thinks, and feels almost selfish for not returning the gesture, the gratuitous favor, but she is immensely greedy, right, that should seem familiar to him too, unashamedly hedonistic, and she hopes he remembers – and they leap into a certain _rhythm_ ; half-naked, out-of-breath, sweet-nothings-whispering mirror images of one another. He kisses _here_ , so she kisses right _there_ , and he touches there, so she touches back, and she moans, so he groans—

Every fiber of her body is awake, is aware, is home. Familiarity – _and there is that word again,_ she comments, likely would have giggled about it too if it weren't for his lips excitedly tasting from hers, making her shrug off any plane of existence they aren't at the center of – in the best places. He does this thing, does this _thing_ she recalls well from languid, lazy weekends spent in his loft where he – _slowly_ – gets her worked up, spread eagle on her back, her spine arching to meet heaven, her toes curling up into his mattress, only to – _slowly_ – withdraw his hand right before the real sweet part, only to smirk in amusement when she gives an irritated half-grunt in response. And he does this thing she recalls well from every single time, from the very first to the very last, where he suddenly lifts his chin, catches her unfocused and unsuspecting gaze in his, the burning intensity sitting right behind her eyes always managing to take her by surprise, even or especially now, always making her, always making – _I love you_ , she murmurs into the semi-silence or possibly merely _thinks_ about muttering and of course he hears it anyhow, that goddamn stubble rubbing against her inner thigh delicately, those goddamn eyes glancing up at her face playfully, like he is saying – _oh_ – like he is saying, _breakfast's the most important meal of the day, remember?_ Then he, _slowly_ , does this thing, this _thing_ , she remembers well from the scorching hot days of summer before they had danced this dance for the first time, before they had the right steps and rhythm figured out, where his head dips and his delighted hums resonate against her, her hand combing through his hair, and she feels almost embarrassed at the way her body answers to his song, to his call, at how fast she, at how fast she—

There is some newness too. She notices it, later, after the fog over her mind has lifted somewhat, after he faithfully trails kisses over her skin on his way back up her body, after he kisses her as well, once, twice, thrice – _I love you_ , he mumbles in-between, and she smiles, kind of sluggish, kind of worn-out, wipes his lips for him, and he tells her that she is beautiful, _beautiful beautiful so so beautiful_ , into her blushing cheeks, into the rosy flush coloring her neck, and she tells him in a tiny whisper, in a tiny mutter, like it's a secret no one but them is supposed to hear, she tells him that she is going to show him – her mouth pressed against the dimple in his chin, her hands wandering – tells him that she is going to show him just how much she loves him too. So there is some newness, newness and clumsiness, two people ( _slowly_ ) getting reacquainted with each other after years apart; she touches here, caresses there, strokes here, cups there, loves and loves and loves, and wonders whether he still likes when she—he gives a sound, like a grunt, guttural and throaty, into her cheek and she doesn't know how it's only occurring to her now how much she has missed this. She raises – _slowly_ – in his lap like she is climbing onto her rightful throne, waves of hair cascading down her shoulders, his hands stroking up her thighs in a similar reverse motion as his finger pokes at a fresh love bite he had left there, and she simply stares at him for a second flowing into eternity, her thumb tracing his bottom lip, stomach lightly contracting at the vague wetness it manages to spot there. He is damn gorgeous – _beautifulbeautifulsobeautiful_ – as he lies there, anticipating her next move, appearing perfectly calm and patient although she can tell he would rather be anything but. He is gorgeous as he lies there, welcoming her many kisses; she kisses here, licks there, nibbles here, sucks there, noisily sighs into his navel, loves and loves and loves and wonders whether he would like her to, like her to—he curses under his breath softly, like he can't quite help it, just a desperate, little chorus of _fuckohshitfuck_ , and _that_ , for sure, is new, and she blindly takes his hand to intertwine their fingers, to let him know that she likes it, the newness of him, the newness of _them_ , her mind instantly alight with the desire to figure out what else she can make him do now, what timeless orchestra they could create—

The sunlight behind his figure makes him look like something holy. A half-crooked halo sitting atop his messy hair as he regards her peaceful, quiet features with a half-crooked smile tugging the corner of his mouth upward. Her whole body feels fuzzy, like video noise scattering across her limbs.

"You good?"

"Mmm… more than," Spencer answers, bumping her nose against his, making sure to steal one or perhaps two pecks in the process. "I gotta say, though, that was a _really_ intense breakfast. I'll have to include that in my Airbnb review once I'm back home."

Toby responds with a loud, barking, insanely happy laugh, pulling back slightly to look – _stare_ , a voice inside her corrects – at her naked body, his blue eyes holding a hungry, greedy glimmer in them, and she likely would have blushed if her cheeks weren't still so fucking pink from the sweet afterglow. "I agree. _Definitely_ better than pancakes."

"Or omelet," she points out, slips into a purr when he begins running his hand down her waist.

"Or waffles," he adds thoughtfully, his tone dropping several octaves.

"Or a bagel and coffee."

"Mhm." Furrowing his eyebrows, an attempt to mimic obliviousness, confusion, his idle fingers merely ghost over her leg when she wraps it around his hip in a callback to the intimate position they had fallen asleep in the previous night. She holds his eyes prisoner in her determined ones, wriggling against him somewhat – _come on, Toby, just take the hint_ – adamant to entice another low grunt from him, another one of those hoarse sounds she has decided are her new-or-maybe-old favorite melody. His palm, though, leaves her thigh (and simultaneously leaves her cold and aching), instead returns to her hair where he fiddles with her bangs – gently _tugs_ , a boyish grin stretching his mouth – that are sort of framing the middle of her sweaty forehead like a portrait and sort of sticking out at the top of her head. She is aware that she looks like a stupid mess and that realization is already there without her spending too much thought on the state of her make-up she should have taken off, but under his gaze, his careful ministrations, she feels like she has created the entire fucking universe. _Strange_ , she thinks. Strange, how love can be, how it makes you feel.

Tenderly, he cradles her cheek, and she takes that opportunity (how could she not?) to playfully sink her teeth into the skin between his thumb and index finger. It makes him smile; a huge and loving and _proud_ smile, and he says, "I love you," and she hasn't been taking count or anything, but it's what he has been saying all morning – _I love you god I fucking love you I love you so so much Spence_ – the words tumbling from his lips easily like a form of worship, as if he is seeking forgiveness still, as if he wants to make up for every time he hadn't said it enough, hadn't told her six and some years ago, hadn't muttered it ever again after; as if he wants to make sure more than anything else that she knows it, that she really _gets_ it, and she has this… this instant, violent flash of ugly memories invading her head, a different brand of worship, if it can be called that, just – _loveyourprettymouthyourbodywhatyoudotome –_ plus a hundred obscene vulgarities she doesn't want to think about with him right next to her. In her throat, a vague taste of bile begins to spread.

And Toby, he catches her frown in his grasp before she can realize that it is what she is doing.

"What's wrong?"

"It's nothing," she pacifies, shakes her head, attempts a smile to cheer him up, fails. "Just kinda forgot that sex is, you know, something you do _with_ someone and not something that is done _to_ you as an impassive bystander."

His concern is tangible on his features when he draws his brows together, letting her words sink in, letting his mind create images of where her life _before_ had taken her, and she swiftly crawls closer to make him (to make _herself_ ) forget. "It's nothing. I promise," she assures, surprised by the firmness of her voice. "Just a lot of bad choices, sponsored by yours truly, and a lot of dating apps where people spell 'you' with a single letter."

Breathing out a defeated sigh, he wraps a strand of her hair around his finger. "Yeah, that doesn't really make me any _less_ worried." He releases her hair into a perfect little ringlet, then continues to repeat the motion. "Online dating… seriously, why would you even do that to yourself?"

"I don't know." Spencer shrugs. "Why does anyone ever do anything?"

"That's awfully eloquent," Toby counters wryly, "and a nice way to dodge my question."

"I'm not dodging any questions," she says, shrugging one shoulder yet again. "What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter because all that matters to me, right now, is that I'm here…" She touches her forehead to his carefully, lowers her voice. "With _you_. And I'd rather not waste another five hours going through old mistakes that could've been avoided and wishing things had happened differently – and trust me, I _do_ wish things had happened differently, but they didn't, and that's fine. We're here now. You and me. And that's… that's everything." The look in his eyes softens a little but does not fade entirely; they do that a lot, his eyes, whenever she brings up fragments of her past, as if he is internally kicking himself for not being there for her to quickly, selflessly clean up her messes, to absorb her pain. _That's_ definitely _gonna take some time to get used to_ , she muses; the newness of the old, the oldness of the new, his goddamn hero complex drenched in genuine empathy. She nearly finds herself wishing he would just get over it and pity her like Aria (still) does, comfortable and safe judgment from afar, reserved for those residing on top of the totem pole of morality. _Poor little Spencer_. Poor little Spencer indeed. She clears her throat and quips, mostly to lighten the mood, "We're here. You and me. And we're both very naked."

Lucky for her, he snorts, decides to abandon the topic temporarily – releases her hair into a tiny ringlet, wraps it around his finger once more, tranquilizing – and says, "Yeah. I've noticed."

"So?"

Wrap. Release. Wrap. Release. "So…?"

"I was thinking about, uh…" Slowly, she runs her foot up his leg and suppresses the giggle that almost spills out when he nuzzles her face in response. "About calling in sick today?"

He gasps. "You're sick? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so? I mean, I have this, uh, this…" He is peppering her jaw with the softest kisses and yet she can tell. He has slipped into an equally joyful tone, always so swift to mimic her every movement, and yet she can _tell_. Her comment is still weighing on his mind, conjuring images she would erase from her blood if only she could; pictures that have likely grown sharp fangs and nails already, nestling up to his brain. Making a face – _poor little Spencer_ – she opts for running her fingers through his hair to distract him (to release his conscience, to release both of them, in fact). "There's this warm, kind of gooey feeling in my stomach, and my heart's, it's just _really_ going crazy and, god, yeah, I also have this pressing urge to spend every single hour of the day with you. That's not normal, is it? It doesn't _sound_ normal. Should I be concerned?"

" _Ohh_ ," he makes, shaking his head wisely. "Yeah. I've been suffering from the same illness for a while now. I think you might've gotten it from me."

"Is there a cure?"

Again, Toby shakes his head, his stubble ticking her cheek and chin. "I'm afraid not."

"Dammit," Spencer huffs and scrunches up her nose. "What can we do?"

"See, I heard there's a way to alleviate the symptoms," he explains mock-seriously, his hand on her hip, drawing her against him. "It's all very experimental, though. I don't know if it'll work."

He gives her barely enough time to mutter a simple " _Try me_ " under her breath before his mouth crashes and collides with hers, catching her muffled gasp of surprise smoothly on his tongue as he breathes out a pleased hum into her heart which is nearly brimming over with love, affection, with _desire_ for a man who, she thinks and thinks and suddenly realizes six years too late, doesn't love her _in spite_ of the fucking failure that she is – _aw, look at poor little Spencer and her poor little self-pity_ – but _because_ of it. "How's that?" he whispers, worries her lower lip between his teeth for three, four, five seconds, doesn't wait for her to stutter a semi-coherent non-response, and she wonders briefly if there is perhaps some unwritten feminist guide out there somewhere that declares it kind of unethical and backwards to feel _unbelievably_ turned on by being cared for so lovingly. Nevertheless, she squirms against him a little, mirroring his groan when his grip tightens on her hip. He kisses her again, kisses way the ugly from before, from last night, from the last six years, and she – she dissolves.

"Hmmm…" she manages to string together. "You know, this doesn't really – _ah_ – doesn't really seem to help with the symptoms. I feel worse now. Who told you this was an acceptable cure?"

"Really?" Another _slow_ , torturous kiss, his palm _slowly_ descending her spine, seemingly intent to touch, caress everywhere at once. "I'm starting to feel better. Maybe we should keep going."

"Maybe," she half-agrees, distracted, as she rolls him onto his back without preamble. A twinkle makes its grand entrance in his widened gaze, then; it's mischievous for the most part and even sort of calculating, sort of content with the idea of humoring her for a little while, it seems. Her and her brief need to take over, to take control, to dominate (three urges she will have to analyze eventually, listen to Mizrahi ramble on about her childhood, sublimation, introjection and other psych bubble vomit). Humming, Spencer tilts her head to the side somewhat (a fruitless attempt to shake her inner voice out of her ear canal and onto the mattress), watches him cross his arms behind his head like in (mock) surrender. Huh. _In my fantasies, we were kinda like this, my ass,_ she thinks, partly amused (mostly turned on). Entertained still (stomach deliciously contracting and head deliciously spinning with possibilities too), she meets his eyes lazily staring up at her, rests her hand on his chest to both steady herself and scratch him just a tad.

He quirks an eyebrow at her. "Yeah?"

And here's a message, a lesson to the thoughts that had occupied her head for days – _and nights_ , she adds, sometimes there were nights too; embarrassing nights where she would emerge from her dark bedroom rosy-cheeked, dignity safely stored away, and adamant to avoid catching even an accidental glimpse of her guilt-ridden features in her hallway mirror – here's a slice of reality once again: there are no dying stars giving birth to themselves, no exploding galaxies a gazillion lightyears away when he sits up with her straddling his lap, tongue never quite stopping, staying still as he writes symphonies into the valleys of her chest. No choirs singing of heaven, no sirens chanting their tunes, beckoning them into the deep blue sea, to the sweetest of deaths, when she settles, her forehead bumping against his forehead, her breath mingling with his breath, her love tightly sewing itself into his love. No countless, colorful fireworks going off in the morning sky when she circles his neck with her arms like an anchor, when he circles her waist with his arms like a safety net. Instead, it's primal, the sudden change in the air; it's pure and raw _instinct_ , the last several beats before they inevitably connect in the same way humanity has been connecting since its very creation, since the very beginning of time—

She has this image inside her head – and _yes_ , thank you, she knows it's corny, but perhaps corny is better than the highly eroticized and, if she has to be honest, vaguely _pornish_ fantasies that'd continuously seep through the depths of her subconscious whenever he dared to look at her for one second too many – so she has these image inside her head, Plato's idea of soulmates; the Androgynous, separated by the angry ( _jealous_ ) gods, an act of absolute cruelty, and an unspoken understanding of one another should they somehow manage to find each other again. And found each other they have, right, she comments silently, her fingers brushing through his sweaty hair as he traces her collarbone with his busy mouth, never brave enough to venture too far from her heart. Found each other they—

With a slight, knowing shift of her features (eyes closing, mouth parting), and a slight, knowing shift of her hips (up, up, up, his hand snaking between them), she sinks down on him, then, and the words, they just, they leave her, fail her, utterly _betray_ her, but maybe, maybe, maybe, there isn't much to say anyway, nothing much to exhale beyond a feeble, muffled half-gasp of _oh_ into the glorious crown of his head, his soft, soft hair, his attentive ear eager to hang onto her every mutter, leaving it to her body to whisper the rest – leaving it to her body to tremble to the rhythm which they swiftly, easily decide upon (mercilessly _slow_ , who would have guessed, mercilessly intertwined); leaving it to her body to fit perfectly against his (still? again?), two puzzles pieces sticking together, like it's attempting to speak up, find its own voice, and tell him in an ancient, foreign language only he would know how to decipher, _oh, there you are, I missed you so much_ , just, just _oh, my love, but you have no idea how long I've been waiting for you_ , just, _oh, oh_ , and some declarations of adoration and devotion nestled in-between too. Maybe there aren't enough words to describe the ache, lingering and all but painful, pulsating undisturbed in her left, the subsequent realization that they will never be close _enough_ for it to erase the saccharine pain of her heart that is craving to clash straight against his; not enough words to verbalize exactly what he is doing to her, and what she means is all of her, her and her skin burning up, her and her lips split wide open (begging, softly, just begging and not sure for _what_ ), struggling to catch a breath but not really; not enough words to summarize how their moans are mingling, stringing together bricks and stones and walls, building a forever home for a forever yet to come—

She, she can't tell where he ends, much less where she begins. In the wild, directionless pattern his tongue is trailing on her neck could be where she is reborn like a phoenix, stroke by fucking stroke, or perchance it's the ticklish, unfinished half-lines, fluttering and free like a bird's wing, his lashes are drawing against her skin whenever he lets his eyelids fall shut (against her many appreciative whimpers hiding in the back of her throat) that are giving her meaning; or perhaps the vacant space between their shared sighs is what she should be calling her home now. Spencer doesn't know. Not really. She doesn't know either, has no clue, if she has ever had a name, like, _really_ had a name, before he had breathed it into her just now, making it sound like a revelation.

Holding onto him more tightly, kissing him and then not, she picks up the pace, circles her hips, and her hair is falling around them, shielding them from the outside world that has gone tranquil, silent, as though it's merely listening to the orchestra of reunion, the universe watching idly on at defied odds and improbabilities and a pair that should have never been and then had and was and _is_ anyhow. His hands are all over her back, fingers digging into her dimples every now and then, edging her on, and whispering, whispering nothing and everything at once and—

It's la petite mort in French— _the little death_. That's what they call it, and Spencer suddenly has a hard time comprehending why because when she comes, his lips faithfully attached to her jaw so as to not obscure her voice, waves of bottled-up tension rolling off her, waves of old sadness swallowed by new waves of euphoria, waves of old fears swallowed by new waves of optimism, waves of old insecurities swallowed by overwhelming waves of his love, his love, his _love_ , and waves of her swallowed by waves of him… when she lets go, breathes her relief into his willing mouth, her limbs feeling almost but not quite foreign, the smile blooming on her features feeling like something she might one day call hers… when she rests her forehead against his in grateful exhaustion and lets out a sincere giggle all while planting kisses into his palm, she realizes that she hasn't felt this alive in years.

* * *

The backseat of Aria's car is littered with trash. He doesn't mean in the (mostly really) endearing way where people's features start a game of hide-and-seek behind a nervous flush as they stutter out apologies about the alleged, disastrous state of their apartment before letting in unexpected guests. _Something_ has been, quite persistently, sticking to his pants at the back of his thighs ever since Aria had picked them up at Toby's, and he can't tell for sure whether it's melted chocolate from one of the half-eaten _Snickers_ bars, sugary-sweet coffee from one of the empty _Starbucks_ cups strewn all over, chewing gum from one of the various gum wrappers or… Toby cautiously eyes the pack of diapers by his feet, tucked under Oscar's empty car seat, the toothless smile on the chubby _Huggies_ baby for the most part obscured by Aria's oversized bag. Well, or something _far_ more sinister than that. He chooses not to think about it.

To his left, sandwiched between his leg, Oscar's mint green baby seat and a laptop case plastered with numerous stickers – ' _Keep calm and write on_ ,' one of them announces in an elegant writing over a blue background, framed by tiny quills; ' _Be_ _careful or you'll end up in my novel_ ,' another one warns wisely on a typewriter, right next to a sticker showcasing a pair of red socks – Aria's most recent book is peeking up at him, and if Toby focuses hard enough, its gaze seems almost abashed at its own existence. It had finally hit the shelves a little while ago and he, in turn, had stumbled across Spencer's copy just last week – Spencer sprawled across his chest, her ear right over his heart, hair still wet from her shower, admitting to him, a loud and _casual_ shrug coloring her words, that she hadn't managed to finish it. "No, look, I _did_ want to, but it's just… not very good? But if I tell her that, she'll just be really, really mad at me and give me those weird owl eyes she does," she had hurriedly added after sitting up and taking in the – _sorry Aria_ – croaking laughter he had no choice but to emit. Plagued by his ever so helpful conscious, however, he had eventually given it a try, mostly so that Spencer wouldn't end up accidentally blowing her cover; she _had_ promised her friend that _I_ so _read it, thank you so much for believing in our friendship_ , and, spinning in a lazy half-circle to catch Toby's eyes after the FaceTime call with Aria had ended, _god, we still_ are _that couple that judges everyone else together, aren't we?_

The novel itself, though, wasn't terrible, but he was swiftly able to dissect, detect which chapters were thrown together after Oscar's birth last year, just to somehow, _somehow_ make the deadline of doom and while he still suspects that his empathy _for_ and knowledge _of_ her situation had likely clouded his opinion of her book as well, the overall, _official_ reviews so far aren't nearly as understanding or forgiving. Actually, they are rather brutal, from what he has seen. Ruthless.

"You need to quit beating yourself up over this. Every respectable artist has worked—published stuff that wasn't exactly a success and attracted a bunch of naysayers. I mean, it comes with the job," Spencer begins (like her hand isn't wedged between the door and her seat in an attempt to run up and down, down and up Toby's leg, and he glances down, carefully places his hand over hers, still or again or _still_ mesmerized by the hasty surge of gooey warmth taking over his body; that's pretty much all they have been doing lately, kissing and touching and kissing and stroking and kissing and petting and kissing and loving, clothes first greedily thrown off and then clothes begrudgingly thrown back on. Forty-something miles had never felt _this_ close and _this_ far either, if he has to be honest, and he thinks of Aria's book and that scene in chapter five, six, or perhaps it was seven, _our immediate and inappropriate comfort with each another was picked up by the other guests and I tried to make myself give a shit. We were seated on the porch of a dead man's house, the only ones not directly impacted by the severity of the situation. It felt like high school, two rowdy kids forced to attend a tedious wake on a weekend that refused to end. It felt like high school, the two of us. AP Giddy with Hormones._ He can recall reading that part for the first time and finding it pretty damn clever. AP Giddy with Hormones. Spencer, though, had merely raised her eyebrows and then patted his knee like a mother would when he read it to her).

"I mean, Van Gogh never really-"

"Yeah, don't patronize me. And _don't smoke in my car_. Jeez," Aria interrupts sharply, proceeds to blow a strand of hair from her eyes with an audible half-grunt, half-raspberry. Spencer's hand (the other one, the unoccupied one, the one that isn't running up, up, up and down, down, down Toby's leg) vanishes in the depths of her handbag guiltily. "And besides, I _know_ you didn't even touch the book. I just _know_."

"Okay, how many times do I have to tell you that's a completely unfounded, baseless accusation and it's honestly insulting how little you think of me? I _did_ read it, thank you," Spencer says, head hastily bopping up and down in an almost sincere-looking nod. Idly sitting in the echoes of her boldfaced lie, Toby can't decide whether he is ought to feel terrified or in awe, so he settles for a mix of both. "And, and—actually, Toby and I were having an intense discussion about it before you came to pick us up."

"Uh-huh."

" _Yeah_ - _huh_. I really loved the, the… symbolism in the third act of the book with the, um, Kübler-Ross model, the, the five stages of grief metaphor you used for Emma's-"

"Gemma," Toby mumbles into his palm.

" _Gemma_ 's arc with her father and the Hamlet parallel for Ophelia? That was simply _ingenious_."

Aria exhales a heavy sigh. "You didn't read it, Spencer."

Spencer pulls up her shoulder into an apologetic pose. "I didn't read it," she admits, letting her words fill the awkward silence of the car (and Aria's sure-to-be widened 'owl eyes', as she had called them) only for a split second before she continues, "I'm _so_ sorry. I really tried. I _did_ and then—Toby read it though and he said he liked it."

In the backseat, Toby hums his agreement. "Yeah. What Spencer said. I gotta be honest, crime's not usually my favorite genre, but I swear I couldn't put it down for days. But…it's…the ending, it's just, y'know…"

"Was horrible, I _do_ know. Thank you for your honesty, Toby, I appreciate it," Aria counters, not sounding all that appreciative (who can blame her) as she takes a sharp right turn (so sharp that Toby has to hold onto the back of Spencer's seat to keep himself from swinging straight against the car door as well). "That's 'cuz I bullshitted it like I bullshitted my way through at least seven consecutive college classes while my baby gnawed on me like I'm the goddamn lemon tree."

Feeling severely inept for this particular band of conversation, Toby clears his throat, drops his gaze and instead opts for picking dust and dirt (he would love to call imaginary) off his seat.

Spencer expertly takes over Toby's non-response, heaves a sympathetic sigh in the direction of her friend, likely coupled with one of those tiny smiles she does too though Toby can't tell with certainty (he can very much – _with certainty_ – feel her nails caressing his calf over his jeans in a rather sensual manner and represses the involuntary shudder against the goosebumps erupting on the back of his neck one by one, emits a sigh to regain a semblance of control).

"You need a vacation. Get away from Twitter and Facebook and Goodreads and the press. And out of your house too. Before this all turns into a modern retelling of _The Yellow Wallpaper_ …" She pauses, musters her friend intently, and adds in a low mutter, "Or a sequel to _Gone Girl_."

The women share a hearty laugh, but Aria sobers up quick, as expected. "It's not even about the damn book. I _told_ my publisher that trying to piggyback off the last one's success and turning it into a trilogy was a big mistake. I literally _knew_ this would happen before it happened." Again, she breathes a sigh and again, Toby pulls an anxious, concerned face, pushes his weight against the door some more and attempts to make himself blend in with it, make himself disappear from the moving car and the very private chat happening inside it. Spencer pats his thigh.

He focuses on the green sign ahead that reads 'Logan Airport' until they pass it, and, to his great luck, Aria picks that moment to blow yet another disgruntled raspberry. "It's about my _husband_ being allowed and, and—being _encouraged_ even to dish out one mediocre book after the other and still being hailed as the second coming of Hemingway while I make the mistake of writing _one_ moderately unsuccessful book and get told that my characters are 'unlikable'. And, tell you what, I bet none of these literature freaks would willingly _touch_ his incoherent, rambly, holier-than-thou, Bukowski-wannabe crap if I didn't edit it for him first. But, of course, nobody gives a shit. It's _Ezra_ who gets his own column, and it's _Ezra_ who gets asked to be on TV, and it's _me_ who gets suggestions such as, _maybe you should start thinking about finding your footing in young adult literature or children's books since you're a mother now_. How's that fair?"

Yeah, it definitely isn't fair. Letting his eyes wander and take in the mess of the backseat again, take it in in a different light now, Toby feels a pang of guilt pushing and tugging at his stomach. Spencer, in the front, nods, makes a low noise of encouragement in her throat, muttering words of frustration under her breath as she – Toby almost, _almost_ breaks into roaring laughter; she _is_ damn sneaky and inappropriately so – uses the opportunity presented to her and Aria's ongoing, fuming distraction to roll down the window and light the previously forbidden cigarette anyhow. To no one's surprise or perhaps to Toby's surprise only, Aria lets her.

"And he doesn't _get_ it, you know. That's the worst part," Aria exclaims (while Toby tries to tidy up the backseat, shoves Oscar's diaper bag over there, leans over to collect a few paper cups so he can remember to throw them out later, folds the cotton Sheriff Woody blanket into a perfect, little square) and Spencer, like rehearsed and on cue, like they have had this conversation before, way too many times to count, shakes her head in gentle understanding, throws in, ' _of course he doesn't'_ to which Aria finishes off her rant with a very fitting, "Seriously, fuck all of this."

"Well, I _did_ tell you to stop editing his stuff and let him embarrass himself in front of the entire literature world when _you_ told me that he still hangs out with guys who compare women's skin to food in their so-called 'books'."

"Ugh. Don't remind me. _Her chocolate skin_."

" _Her caramel skin_."

" _Mocha latte nipples_. Who the hell has-" The sound of Oscar's rattle landing on the floor (right between Toby's feet, him promptly bending down at an uncomfortable angle to retrieve it) snaps both women out of their mutual exasperation. Aria's unimpressed gaze finds Toby's in the rear-view mirror for half a second. A half second in which she appears more than a little confounded, like she had forgotten he was in the car with them (a second in which she appears more than a little _pissed off_ too, like she is putting blame on Toby for Ezra's wrongdoings).

So Toby states, after clearing his throat rather lamely, "Sorry. I dropped Oscar's rattle."

"Don't be. I should clean the car anyway." Aria pulls onto the departure level, an endless round and round of road and cars and lost drivers on their nth odyssey to locate the right terminal, the airport brimming with life. The air _inside_ the car, however, has morphed into the direct opposite. Toby shifts in his seat, sipping on a cocktail of awkwardness and discomfort. "Word of advice, you guys? Seriously, don't get married. Or have kids. Or, or move in together. Just do whatever you're doing right now and stick to it. From this point on, shit's only gonna get worse."

Spoken like a bizarre reincarnation of Cassandra of Troy, Aria drops them off at their terminal approximately three minutes (of quiet) later, a swift yet heartfelt exchange of standard goodbye protocols – "Take care and text me when you're at the hotel, okay?" and "Thank you for driving us, tell Ezra we said hi" – mixed with a couple nonstandard and rather morbid farewell formulas Toby assumes are unique to the two women and their bond with each other – "Please try not to pull a _Gone Girl_ while I'm out of state. I don't have the patience or time to deal with guys past college age who have their own true crime podcast" and "If you come back triggered and mopey and decide it's time for an alcohol binge, you're on your own and I _will_ call the cops on you."

Then they watch her drive off, standing side by side, Spencer halfheartedly waving at the back of Aria's silver hybrid, Toby faithfully guarding their baggage cart though he isn't certain from whom. Her hand eventually sinks down, comes to a rest on his lower back, and she comments, still staring after her friend who is long gone, "Don't tell me that freaked you out or anything."

"Why would I be freaked out?"

"Well, you got so silent back there, for a moment I actually thought you had fainted."

He chuckles at the mental image, wipes some cold, residue ash off her shirt, delighted when she raises her chin to send him a dazzling smile. "What was I supposed to say exactly?" He lets her guide them towards the entrance, pushing the cart along. "It was _weird_. I didn't know they were having issues. They seemed fine last week. It didn't seem like my place to say anything."

"They're not 'having issues'," Spencer replies wryly, rolls her eyes, hand slipping into his back pocket with ease. "This is so—okay, so you know how I'm this messy, sticky ball of…basically constant anxious energy?" He hesitates for a beat, tongue protectively rolling around the honest answer, until she quirks her eyebrow at him and he nods, defeated. "Yeah. That's Aria. But with anger? She's this fluffy ball of primal, female rage that needs to blow off steam every now and then. Give it a week and she'll be back to…I don't know, writing sonnets about Ezra."

He releases an amused snort but throws one or two glances at her regardless. "What about you?"

"What about me?" One perfectly arched brow. "Do you want me to write sonnets about Ezra?"

"Are _you_ freaked out?"

"Oh, _please_ ," she counters, again with an eye-roll. He can feel her fingers play with the keys in his back pocket and squirms against the sensation. "If all it took for me to 'freak out' was women in my social circle involving me in their relationships, I wouldn't have one peaceful moment to myself between Hanna recording Caleb smacking his lips in his sleep and sharing it in the group chat with thirty angry emojis, Emily's cryptic vagueness when it comes to _her_ love life but her constant interest in _mine_ , Ali's refusal to talk about the second toothbrush in her bathroom I saw months ago…and I suppose Melissa's lack of taste in decent men who don't screw ER doctors when she isn't looking." She mulls it over, then adds, "And don't get me started on my parents."

"She's your best friend."

"Yeah, no. Trust me, I love Aria—to death even, and I'm tremendously grateful for everything that she's done for me this past year. Both her _and_ Ezra, actually. But she's not my best friend."

Toby frowns. This _is_ news. To him, at least. "She isn't?"

As a response, Spencer halts in her steps, whipping her head in his direction, appearing to be as confused as Toby feels. " _Wow_ ," is her only (and especially dry) comment, however, before she digs out her phone from her bag and wonders aloud, "Are we even at the right terminal? I _really_ hate Logan Airport. This is worse than O'Hare."

"And Philadelphia," Toby adds on and says, not able to help himself, "Who is? I always thought it was Aria. You guys hang out literally all the time."

"Maybe we should have checked-in online…"

"Is it _me_?"

Eventually, she exhales a loud sigh, glimpses up from her phone, just to—just to shoot him _one_ very heavy and very, very meaningful look (that is _perhaps_ slightly accusatory for not instantly getting it too, but he chooses to ignore that part) and Toby freezes, gives a tiny noise someplace between relief and surprise, his eyebrows unfurrowing, his stomach welcoming the blazing sun that is rising there. "Oh."

"Yeah. 'Oh' is right."

"I had no idea."

Hand reaching up to either fix or mess up his hair, Spencer purses her lips. "I can't believe you were an actual _cop_. You're really fucking bad at picking up hints," she says, smiling despite her words. "Meanwhile, I was feeling self-conscious for _months_ because I thought you didn't…and you probably didn't even _notice_ …"

"I mean, I didn't wanna be presumptuous. Is that bad?"

"Well, maybe you should be presumptuous more often." With that, she returns her focus to her phone and clicks her tongue, impatient. "Seriously, where _is_ our terminal?"

She does this a lot nowadays. Meaningful confessions about the new-or-old-or-new depths that they are exploring together repackaged into seemingly offhand comments, always squeezed and implied and tacked onto otherwise mundane conversions. Like she doesn't want Toby to quite grasp the entirety, the severity, the wholeness, the heaviness of her words. Those stormy waters that they are navigating, they are new and confusing. Stormy waters that make themselves seem benign, peaceful, familiar, welcoming but still are, by all means, unknown and strange (and on some days, Toby adds on a while later as he watches Spencer's fingers move swiftly across her laptop on the plane. On some days, they are terrifying. And something, his head or his body, he can't tell, it sort of sighs then: a strange, wistful little sigh, a strange, gnawing little voice behind his ribs that sort of scares him to death, that reminds him of all the ways he could fuck this up, that reminds him that he hasn't been anyone's best friend in _ages_ , hasn't been anyone's constant, anyone's home, anyone's source of happiness – not in a way that had mattered, anyhow, not in a way that had _lasted_ beyond a mere illusion – in _years_. And he brushes it off because what else is there to do? Those stormy waters are new and confusing and petrifying, and his heart is warm, covered in foam and saltwater, in his love for her creating echoes of tidal waves, in his anxiety levels rising like the sea. And he brushes it off because what else is there to do?)

And then: Chicago.

In Chicago, they don't bother unpacking.

In Chicago, time transforms, treats itself to a rest, comes to a standstill, and they barely make it over the threshold before they are stumbling into their temporary home, recklessly stumble into one another too, and then, amid shared laughter and hungry kisses, stumble on top of the king-size bed that is taking up half if not most of the entire living space. It's a fancy room in an even fancier hotel the not-so-fancy cab driver has brought them to: roughly the size of Toby's studio in Boston, give or take a few inches, with cloudless skies hugging themselves to urban gray just outside the floor-to-ceiling windows and maybe, if he moved a little closer to the glass, he could make out a dash of green as well, a hint of yellow and white and violet and blue–all those pretty flowers slowly getting ready for spring patiently waiting its turn.

Not like Toby is seeing, _really_ seeing, any of that, though. Love _is_ blind, after all; terribly stupid and blind and happy and he has a very hard time making (forcing?) himself care about anything that isn't Spencer right now. He feels almost (and yet not at all) helpless in the addictive smiles she sends his way, in the softness of her skin he keeps tracing with his greedy fingertips like all those countless freckles and birthmarks speckled across her body have come together to form a secret message of devotion in braille and he alone can read it. He gets lost in the warmth of her flush against him, finds himself in the way her ankles effortlessly cross at his back, in her voice dipping a tad, whispering into his ear as her hands continue to mess up his hair further, "Longest flight of my fucking life," and he releases a quiet chuckle into her sweet neck and says, "I can't believe we get _five whole days_ together," and she gives a content hum, tugging at his shirt – _off_ , she seems to urge without saying anything at all, _off, off_ – and then they are back to pretty much all they have been doing lately. Kissing and touching and kissing and caressing and kissing and petting and kissing and loving, throwing off clothes, throwing off clothes – _off, off, off_ – gasping for breath, gasping for one another…

Later, they go out, sweaty and hungry and exhausted as they are ( _AP Giddy with Hormones_ , he automatically thinks, smiling against his will, as he watches Spencer watch her reflection in the elevator, slowly wiping under her eyes, slowly reapplying her lipstick, slowly catching his gaze in the mirror and smiling at him giddily). So they walk through sundown with her holding onto his arm and him holding onto her heart, enjoying the gentle quiet engulfing them amid the busy, noisy city. Eventually, (the lack of) food _does_ become an issue, though, and Spencer just looks up at him with that adorable, little thinking face she does and picks a place for them, seemingly at random, and it's not until _after_ they are seated in a cozy, rather sparsely-lit restaurants, their coats bunched on the bench that they are sharing, sitting side by side, that she lets go of the straw she has been worrying between her teeth and states, robotic, "I used to work here."

Leave it to Spencer to drop bombs unannounced (bombs that are oddly shaped, like scars right in the process of healing. All bumpy and swollen and pink, too, on the brink of infection).

"Wor—here?" Momentarily confused, Toby hums, looks around, trying to catch the ghost of an old memory or two. Trying to picture a vastly different version of her wiping tables and picking up orders, running marathons to the kitchen (and back) and smiling uncomfortably wide, an ill-fitting mask, for extra tips. "So this is _the_ restaurant. It looked different in my head. It's nice."

"No, it's not. It sucked," she comments dryly, nibbling on her straw again. "But the food's good from what I remember so there's that."

A different waitress than the one who had brought them their drinks comes by, then, and before Toby can formulate a retort, maybe wonder why she would take him _here_ of all places, Spencer makes a very un-Spencer-like sound and rises from her seat to embrace the other woman swiftly.

"Oh my goodness! Hey! I didn't know you still worked here!"

"See, I _thought_ it was you," the waitress says (smiling uncomfortably wide) as she briefly gazes over at Toby, letting her eyelids flutter shut for a beat in a way that reminds him of Pudding the Cat. "Haven't seen you in _ages_. Didn't you move to, like, New York or something?"

"Yeah, Worcester, but yeah—I'm on a business trip, actually," Spencer explains, sits back down, now that the greeting ceremony is over (and puts her hand on Toby's knee, giving it a reassuring, little squeeze, although he can't figure out if the reassurance is meant for him or herself). "And then I thought, well, since I'm already here, why not drop by, see how you guys are doing? And if anyone's still left."

"Anyone from the old crew, you mean? Not really," the waitress replies and shrugs, gold creole earrings swinging back and forth. "Carla actually left a couple weeks after you did, and Steven broke his leg…uh, I think about three months ago? Bet you can't guess where it happened."

"The basement-"

"The basement stairs. Still no idea when he's coming back. Or _if_ he's coming back," the waitress continues sullenly. Spencer scrunches up her face. "Mimi left us for the Ukrainian Village. Says she's _way_ happier over there. Teddy quit. Dunno what he's up to these days. And, oh yeah, that's right, Nadia. Nadia asked for a raise and they answered by firing her."

"What? You can't serious. That's crazy. She's been working here for _years_."

The waitress snorts, lighting the yellow tealight on the table with a lighter that has a glittery and sparkling green skull on it. "Yeah, but why give a damn about loyalty to your oldest employees when you can just hire new ones for cheap?" And once more, she shrugs, never losing the very awkward smile on her face, however, like she had methodically put it on at the beginning of her shift and has no idea how to take it off before she is done for the day. "Guess Elias is still around but he's off today."

They exchange a brief yet meaningful glance with one another that Toby catches from the corner of his eye but doesn't know what to do with once it's firmly inside his grasp. Next to him, mixed with a little curved eyebrow of disgust, Spencer proceeds to turn her attention back to her straw and nibbles on it some more. "Not like I was looking forward to seeing him anyways."

"Eh, suppose the feeling's mutual on his end," the waitress comments. The women share a loud, throaty laugh (the echoes of which Toby feels _really_ lost in; like in Aria's car earlier). They fall quiet, then, and the waitress asks, "So how have _you_ been?"

"Good. _Great_ , actually, and-" Stopping herself, Spencer suddenly grabs Toby's arm. "Ugh, god, I'm so sorry. Where are my manners?"

"Must've left them in Boston."

" _Worcester_ ," Spencer corrects her old coworker in a firm tone, though adding a playful eye-roll for good measure, hand idly playing with Toby's sleeve. "This is Jo. Jo, this is my…Toby."

"Nice to meet you, Mytoby. That's a unique name."

Spencer touches her forehead, muttering a half-amused yet half-irritated " _God_ " under her breath as Toby snickers, taking Jo's hand she is extending his way and shaking it. "Nice to meet you."

"Where does it come from? It sounds exotic."

" _Jo_."

"Do you go by 'My' or to you prefer 'Myto'?"

Spencer has chosen to abandon ship and the conversation by burying her face inside her palms; Toby emits another amused laugh, loosely throws one arm around her shoulder, and says, "Well, I usually go by Toby."

Jo nods. "Ah. The classic."

"Don't you have other customers or something?" Spencer prompts.

"Hey, I was just trying to get to know Mytoby better," Jo replies, an air of faux innocence inside her words as she fishes a tiny, black notepad and pen out of the front pocket of her apron. Toby chuckles, eyes interlocking with Spencer's for a moment who eventually disentangles and drops hers in the direction of their hands. "Now, what can I get you guys?"

"Uh, number 15 and… 32, and I think Toby wanted the-"

"The chicken, yeah."

"15, 32 and 38."

"You know number 15 is the tartare, right?" Jo points out.

"Oh, shoot. No thank you. What's the cheeseboard?"

"18. Don't ask me why they changed it." Jo scribbles into her notebook and sends Toby a wink when he looks up at her. "18, 32 and 38 coming right up. Anything to drink?"

Toby lifts his half-empty glass for her to see. "We're good. Thank you."

As soon as Jo leaves their side (but not without making sure to give Toby another gleeful smirk), Spencer breathes a sigh, takes out her phone from her bag and starts busying herself with it. It's not something he isn't accustomed to; she is always answering and receiving e-mails from work at virtually all times of the day, taking business calls even when she is off and 'fixing shit others have fucked up in my absence' as she had once told him while they were lounging around on a lazy Sunday and he had pointed out that it was well past a reasonable hour to be contacted (read: bothered) by your boss. So, figuring that she will be done soon anyhow, he merely takes another sip from his drink and watches the restaurant gradually come to life, more customers rushing in and more waiters filling the space (all of them sporting uncomfortably wide smiles), but minutes and minutes of silence go by and a glance he throws sideways lets him in on something he likely wasn't supposed to catch: she isn't answering e-mails. Or text messages. Or checking up on her alerts. Swiping back and forth between her (very empty, mind you) notification center and then lockscreen, brown eyes have yet to meet his, her face looking like she is digesting one (mostly) uncomfortable thought after the other.

Toby quirks an eyebrow at her. "Spence?"

Widened eyes peek out from under an almost convincing poker face. "Hmmm?"

_Ah_.

The eyebrow vanishes on its own, makes way for a teasing grin instead as he bumps his shoulder against hers, intent to get the same grin out of her. "'Your Toby', huh?"

The corners of her mouth twitch, unimpressed, but her eyes are warm. "Why did I already _know_ you wouldn't let that go?"

"I _would_ have if _you_ hadn't decided to do…whatever this is," he answers truthfully and motions towards the phone she is still clutching inside her hand like a stuffed animal. "Seriously, it's not a big deal. Since when do we get embarrassed in front of each other?"

She rolls her eyes with another huff and leans into his side. "Easy for you to say," she mumbles, locking her phone. "I _did_ wanna say, 'this is my boyfriend Toby,' but it just didn't seem very…I mean, we were boyfriend and girlfriend as _kids_ and now we're not and it's just—and, and, and, I mean, what else _is_ there? _Life partner_? Please. _Significant other_?"

"Lover?" he deadpans.

"Puke."

"Beau?"

She snickers, swatting his chest. "Honestly, stop it."

"Suitor?"

"All right, Mr. Thesaurus."

"Swain?"

"Keep going and I'm downgrading you to 'Just Toby'."

Not quite able to hold it back any longer or keep a straight face when her incessant giggles are so deliciously vibrating into his skin, like the pitter-patter of rain on the roof of a car, he finally caves and emits a laugh of his own. Then he wraps his arm around her frame, plating a careful kiss on the crown of her head. "If it's any consolation… I am, you know. 'Your Toby'. Whatever that entails." She quiets in his embrace, tilting her head all the way back to gaze at him. Basking in the warmth of her eyes, he pokes the dimple in her cheek, born from her beautiful smile, and the anxious storm inside his heart quietens, too, sunlight not too far away now, as he continues in a somewhat lowered tone, "Even if you can't bring yourself to call me your boyfriend or call _this_ a relationship."

"Yes funny."

In Chicago, Toby feels hazy; a good kind of hazy, with a side of wonder-to-go. They walk across the DuSable Bridge under the night-sky that is mostly airplanes and artificial lights chasing off the dark. Spencer leans over the railing there, watches the boats leave and enter Chicago River, and the small breeze from the harbor is caressing the brown waves of her hair like he is thinking about doing, and all those make-believe stars mimicking the moon's gentle warmth are mirrored inside her gaze upside down, causing them to shine bright, and he thinks, it's hard, picturing or secondhand remembering her broken, desperate, utterly miserable in a city like this that seems to have an answer, a cure, a witty slogan hanging over adverts and storefronts for everything.

Back at the hotel, they first shed their clothes and then their worries, in that exact order, and she spills a little bit of makeup on the sheets, but who cares. They don't own this stuff, right? They don't own a single thing in this city. Not the bed. Not the blanket. Not the chairs. (Not their past and definitely not their fears of a future yet to come). They don't have to take responsibility for anything. What they do instead is _take_ —take turns raiding the fridge in the corner of the room, that is, its miniature contents tasting oddly sterile and expensive, and her gorgeous mouth tastes like mouthwash when she has him pressed against the shower wall (so many sparkling, make-believe stars inside her gaze again; arousal and drunkenness goading each other) and skillfully reduces him, herself, _them_ to their most primal, most basic instincts. They stay up until sunrise and try to catch glimpses of its reflection in the windows outside theirs, his arm snaking around her waist, his nose pressed into the back of her sweet-smelling neck, and she traces the zig-tag formation of pink and red layers in the sky with her index finger, and the morning is so peaceful and quiet, he thinks he can nearly hear their hearts hum to the same silent song of wholeness.

(And in Chicago, there are things they don't openly talk about. It's not the elephant in the room, really; that one, after all, is still small and young enough to willfully overlook, isn't it, more of a calf than a grown cow, to be dealt with _eventually_ , but not necessarily at this moment. It's her reoccurring dre—no, _nightmares_ he knows well from Massachusetts where she tosses and turns all night and suddenly loses all of her teeth, waking up with the taste of blood prominent on her tongue. Or where she falls to a violent death from the Bell Tower, just one miscalculated step, just one overestimated second of bravery. Or where she stumbles over his cold, rotting body in the woods again—and sometimes, as it seems to be the theme of her subconscious nowadays, she finds him next to her in bed, his chest split open, his eyes empty, one dream gorier than the last.

And it's them avoiding getting close to her old apartment, taking detours and pretending not to know that they are pretending, and it's her choosing silence on some nights – "I swear, this isn't about you. I just…I have to think for a moment," she then normally says, nodding desperately, urgently, wanting for him to _get_ it, before curling up in the armchair, like that is going to make him feel any better or less useless. And it's her choosing violent overcompensation on others – her fingers stroke over the bitemarks on his neck on their third night and the wonder across her features easily morphs into utter disgust and he has to hurry so it doesn't manifest into _more_ so he takes her hand into his and kisses her palm before she can go onto inspect the several angry scratches her nails have left on his back and shoulders, and he says, "Spence, it's fine. We were a bit rougher than usual but I'm okay. We aren't kids anymore. I can take it," and yes, she _does_ hear him but she isn't listening because she shakes her head no, eyebrows knitted together, bites her bottom lip in the same way she had bit him, and sighs, "I'm so sorry, Toby," and he shakes his head too, shakes it desperately, urgently, wanting her to _get_ it, to understand that he would literally do _anything_ for her – and it's…they have a long way to go still, don't they, a small boat slowly navigating the stormy waters of the unknown. But he loves this woman. Like crazy.)

"You're gonna end up resenting me."

It comes out of the blue. One quiet moment, they are in the bathtub after a long day of meetings for her and a long day of exploring Chicago for him, and she is straddling his middle, his eyelids fluttering closed as her fingers comb through his hair and massage his scalp, forming cartoonish hairstyles with the citrus-scented shampoo she had found in the bathroom cabinet. The next she has climbed off him, and when he opens his eyes, confounded, she is propped up against white porcelain opposite from him, mustering his reaction with a gleam inside her browns that he can only describe as morbid curiosity. She is throwing an accusation into the room like she is merely making a comment about the takeout dinner they had earlier; offhand, tacked onto an otherwise mundane conversation about how he looks like Alfalfa from _The Rascals_ , softly cushioned in-between two giggles to soften blow.

"What?" He blinks. It feels surreal. "Why would— _how_ could—what the hell brought this on?"

Spencer shrugs. "It's… what happened in the car. On the way to the airport. With Aria."

Toby, admittedly, needs several beats to adjust first. To adjust to the abrupt cold in the bathroom bursting into the tiny space like they have forgotten to close the door that is making him shudder, slide into the water for cover. And to adjust to her tone of voice, oddly nonchalant but a hint…a hint of anxiety peeking through. The same anxiety that had briefly visited him on the plane.

Then it takes him a few more seconds to remember.

_The airport_.

Right.

He furrows his eyebrows when he finally does. "I thought it hadn't freaked you out."

"It didn't. And then... it… did?" Again, she shrugs, helplessly trailing off with a grimace. "They resent each other."

"Spence…" he begins, thoroughly confused and rapidly going through the past days in his head to figure out what he might have said or done to make her feel this way. "You said that they are fine, remember? Aria's probably back to… what did you call it? She's probably back to writing sonnets about her love for Ezra or something. They're okay."

"They are. That's the thing. But I also think, on some level that they haven't noticed yet, they're deeply, _deeply_ frustrated with their lives and each other and, and, and…" Suddenly, she sits up, rises from the surface, losing her initially relaxed position against the tub, her hands coming up to grip the edges. "And then I look at everyone else in our social circle and I, I feel like they all really fucking _despise_ each other."

"We're not them. You know that, right? We're not out friends and we're not-"

"But who says that we're not gonna _be_ them?" she cuts in and he mirrors her, sitting up as well so that they are face to face in the middle, legs bent at awkward angles, hearts bent too. "You're _fine_ now. You're fine with…my constant relapses and unhealthy methods of coping and my, my _mood swings_ that don't even make sense to me 'cuz you're under the impression that it will get better eventually but what if it doesn't? What if I just learn how to pretend better and never how to actually _deal_ better? Growth and progress and recovery aren't exactly linear, Toby, and you're maybe gonna be okay with all this for…what? Two years? Five years? Until you've burned out because you're tired of watching me slip whenever life throws something my way my stupid brain can't handle. And then what? Then _what_?"

_His_ stupid brain then hums with a realization. Her behavior he had previously chalked up to her bones saturated in memories she is trying to let go of, to scabbed-over wounds itching nervously at the sight of familiar streets having turned unfamiliar, changes color, changes _meaning_ before his inner eye. Her withdrawal turns into denial; bitemarks and scratches into bargaining; silence into numerous questions, numerous pleas his ear had remained deaf to. _You know, I used to work here_ , she had told him matter-of-factly, worrying her straw between her teeth, and maybe she'd also worried her heart between them, maybe she had also tried to say, _this is where I was at one of the lowest points of my life, do you still want me?_ And they had stood on the bridge later and they hadn't talked, much less _needed_ any big, fancy words at all, her hands eventually retreating from the railing to hold his and intertwine their fingers, lifting them to brush her mouth against the back of his, but maybe she had also tried to say, _I'd come here after work sometimes to look into the water and think thoughts I don't wanna bring up again, do you still want me?_ And then she had crawled out of her nightmares like crawling out of her grave, his brave warrior, shoved him against the mattress, _hard_ , and the look inside her eyes then had nearly scared him, void of any warmth, any genuine warmth, greedily absorbing his rather than reflecting it, but perhaps it shouldn't have, because maybe all she tried to say, tell herself was, _we're real and we're okay_.

And it's easy to forget, he thinks, because it's much easier to tattoo her countless smiles into his brain instead; to grant his mind permission to let itself be consumed wholly by her head-thrown-back-into-her-neck, barking laughter; watch her carry herself through the world these days with a certain lightheartedness to her steps he wants to call it, that a younger version of him had often struggled to find. It's easy to forget that her driving force hasn't changed all that much from six and some years ago. That it's still a deep-seated desire to be loved; a deep-seated fear of loss.

Two sides of the same fucking coin.

(And of abandonment and of failure, of, of— _if someone with a heart like yours couldn't bring himself to love me, to want me, to be with me, then who possibly would_? And how does he even begin to fix this? How does he pacify an innate fear he had done plenty to nourish?)

So he holds her eyes, refuses to let go. Still her mirror image in more ways than one – mentally, emotionally, physically – still sitting in lukewarm bathwater, still aware of the space which they are trapped in, their grasps firm on the edges of the tub – _we're real and we're okay, we're real and we're okay_ – the lights bouncing off the white tiles uncomfortably.

"Spence…" he tries again. Softly. She lets him but breaks off their eye contact. "I…I don't even know what to say right now except that I love you. I love you and your lack of faith in me and… well, in _us_ is a little disturbing. You're making a lot of assumptions right now. A lot of them."

"I'm not. Okay? It's like…" She rubs her face, driblets of water dropping from her jaw, breaking the surface. "You always wanted this…married life and _kids_ and what if I can't give that to you? What if I never want kids because I know I'd make Mrs. DiLaurentis look sane in comparison? And you say you're 'fine', because you're always 'fine' with everything, and then, twenty years later, you end up resenting me because I kept you from having something you-"

She is talking herself into a rage, a stream of word vomit flowing freely and uninterrupted from her mouth, or perhaps she is talking herself into an impending breakdown, a breakdown she has been stewing over since they had gotten here, it's not utterly clear yet, and the tears, they haven't quite started, but they are indeed close to forming, he can easily tell from the tiny, audible crack clouding her shaky voice, her shoulders stiffening under the weight her words are shoveling on them, and Toby, he feels useless. He reaches out for her, tries to draw her into his arms. "Hey-"

"No. This is a conversation we _should_ be having. This is a conversation we should've had _before_ we had all that psycho talk and got all in our feelings about it and told ourselves it'd work out."

"I'm twenty-seven. Kids are _literally_ the last thing on my mind right now."

"Right now," she echoes.

"No. No, not just right—Spence, I don't know if I want kids, _ever_ , all right?" he replies and oh, his thoughts are spiraling now, and he supposes that it was kind of inevitable, wasn't it, as they come rushing back into his peripheral; memories of cold, cold beds, loveless kisses and the taste of utter disgust, _self-hatred_ , overwhelming him every time he had dared take a peek at his own face – the face of a complete stranger – in the mirror over the bathroom sink. "I have no fucking idea if I still want _any_ of those things—marriage, kids, a white-picket fence, an overpriced fixer-upper, and whatever it is that you think is my wish for our future together. I don't _know_. Okay?"

She retaliates with a sharp jab into his guts that he, honestly, should have expected. "You wanted them with Yvonne."

He opens his mouth to answer.

(…thinks back to his dreams, to Spencer's salt-rimmed lips glistening at the beach like faraway galaxies as he bent to pluck seashells woven into cascades of brown hair like clinging onto tang, their imprints in the sand swallowed by the incoming tide; thinks back to Yvonne's body feeling _wrong_ , wrong like he had for months, nestled comfortably against his side in the early hours of dawn, the breeze from outside the open windows tickling his nose with the scent of salt and the ocean, tickling his nose with the scent of yearning…)

Realizes he doesn't know what to say.

(… _you wanted them with Yvonne_ , she tells him, like he hasn't already bared himself to her gaze, last month and the months before, over and over, just, _you wanted them with Yvonne_ ; a hilarious notion, that is, him, wanting any of these things – children growing up in the shadows of a play-pretend love, a marriage feeling broken before it could bloom – him, _actively_ wanting, desiring them, when the mere thought of the future, a future with Yvonne, had frequently sent him into bouts of insomnia, worry, anxiety, bouts of, bouts of— _disgust_ , yeah, disgust at himself for lying to one woman while his thought kept lying with the other…)

Closes it again.

(…and it's hilarious, he points out then, that she doesn't or that she maybe _won't_ get the charade, the masquerade ball his time on that damned island had proved itself to be; that they are hurting each other right now, and hurting each other _deeply_ at that, and that they are too far gone to stop and go back to the old-or-new normal; that her driving force – _fear of abandonment and failure and loss_ – has set her into motion, sent her onto a quest to designate a meaning to this, to figure out answers to questions beyond their control; that _his_ driving force – _fear of failure_ , it hits him suddenly, _fear of failure and loss and the idea of never being worthy enough to give and receive,_ deserve _love_ – has rendered him speechless, has rendered him immobile…)

Blinks at her.

(Mirror images.)

For someone like her, he presumes, one who has the tendency, the _bad habit_ , to overthink every little thing, to overinterpret and assign meanings when there aren't any, his stunned silence, her words giving him pause must have felt like a lifetime. To her credit, however, she simply averts her eyes, her arms crossing protectively over her chest as she leans back – the possibility of her leaning out of reach is too hurtful to consider – resting herself against the bathtub with a pensive expression taking over where, a minute ago, doom was slowly creeping up.

"I'm not…" Spencer says, breaks off with a tiny sigh, shakes her head. "I'm not…this isn't me being jealous or anything, okay? That's not the kind of girlfriend I am." She frowns, muttering a quiet ' _normally_ ' under her breath that he almost misses. "I _know_ you had a life before me, and I know you had a life after me. We both did. I'm not holding that against you. I never would."

"Well, I did not exactly have a very happy life before you," Toby responds grimly, running his finger over the edge of the tub in order not to look at her. "Or after you, for that matter."

"But you did have one. And I'm not…" From the corner of his eye, he can see her tilt her head, follow the movements of his finger on white porcelain; up and down, up and down. "Toby, can you please look at me?"

He does.

And she furrows her eyebrows at him with apparent realization. "You're mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you," he replies instantly and really, he isn't. The only person he is mad at right now is himself. Not that he is capable of taking responsibility for his actions, anyhow. After all, they don't any of these things, do they? They don't own this tub. They don't own the shampoo dripping down his back. And he sure as hell doesn't own his fuck-ups. Still. "I just…I thought we went over this. I thought you understood that, this whole thing? With Yvonne and that island and the future we were working towards—the future that _she_ was working towards, it wasn't-"

"Real?" she wonders, voice soft.

(… _we're real and we're okay, we're real and we're okay_ …)

"It wasn't something I _actually_ wanted. Was it something that, at one point for whatever reason, had myself convinced I wanted? Yes. Something I _thought_ was the right thing to do-"

Spencer interrupts him with a small snort, water splashing as she lifts her hand to cover her lips before a laugh can erupt out of her. Toby raises his eyebrow, lost.

"Nothing. I'm just…I'm gonna fuck this up either way, huh?" she states, like it's not a big deal at all—offhand, tacked onto a casual shrug, cushioned in-between brief eye contact where Toby can't tell who breaks it first. "If you're only saying what you're saying 'cuz you think it's what I need to hear, and you're still picturing grandchildren and a puppy in the suburbs, then…tough luck to me, you'll end up hating me as soon as I hit menopause."

She quietens for a second, then says, twisting her pursed lips to the side, "And if you're telling the truth, well, then what does that say about me?"

"What does that mean?"

"You wanted something—or, excuse me, how could I not _get_ it—you 'not-wanted' a future with a woman you, by your own admission, stopped loving halfway into your relationship, and here I am, reduced to vague promises of a future where we may or may not see eye-to-eye on things."

"I don't fucking know what you _want_ ," he says, a nervous, quite desperate snicker slipping past before he can stop it. _Mirror images, mirror images_. "Do you _want_ marriage, or, or do you not want marriage? Do you want kids, or do you not want kids? And I-" He trails off, massages the bridge of his nose, and where silence had grown, his pent-up feelings implode. "I loved Yvonne and then I did not, okay? And I thought this, this—proposing to her, moving away with her, all that… _marriage_ and preparing to have kids someday, I thought it was the be all, end all of love. Of _life_. Something I had to move forward to, something that would bring me joy? And it wasn't, okay? It wasn't. I went to bed with her and I fell asleep to thoughts of _you_ …what do you want me to say? The truth? Really? You wanna hear that I held her in my arms while I dreamed about going down on you? What do you want me to say? You want me to own up to my mistakes? Do you have all night? Do you _really_ wanna do this right now?

Strange, how he had never thought to consider that the stormy waters of the open sea their small boat was trying to find land on could be lukewarm bathwater smelling like cheap bubble bath.

"I'm disillusioned, all right?" he continues without meeting her eyes, and he can't help then but wonder, for a brief second, who is going to end up resenting whom by the end of his self-pitying monologue; his sacrament of penance. "I thought I deserved happiness and I thought I deserved joy and I thought I deserved to love and be loved and, and, she was _there_ , she took me in, and she made me realize that I didn't. That I never had. Is that what you want to hear, Spencer? You think I'm gonna end up 'hating' you. Like any of your actions could ever measure up to anything that I have done. To her. To _you_. I love you. I love you so much, and I know I don't deserve to because… look at me. Look at the kind of person I am. What do you want me to say?"

And Spencer pauses— _hesitance is a lifetime_ ; he gets it now—as she exhales a breath, seemingly to calm herself, he realizes when he finally, _finally_ , looks up and catches a short glimpse of her eyes, sea salt hiding inside them but not really. "I want you to commit," she says quietly, staring at the water, staring at their hands inches away from one another on the edge of the tub.

"I _am_ committed."

"No," she retorts, shaking her head slowly. "No, you're not. And I need you to commit because I'm real tired of dancing circles around you to make you see me. I'm tired of virtually _begging_ for your attention because you'd much rather fight your regrets than be with _me_. In the present."

"Neither of us is very much _in_ the present," he adds on warily, hungover from the emotions that he wishes they would have dealt with another time, another place, another life. "You're scared of the future. I'm not stupid. You're fucking terrified."

"I know." Carefully, she edges her hand closer to his so that their fingers are maybe sort of, kind of touching, exhaling another breath as she regards him with something akin to defeat blooming on her face. "I thought this would be easier, to be honest."

The irony of their situation isn't lost on him; hadn't she said the exact same thing to him in his kitchen last month when they were discussing the fate of their future?

He takes her hand, laces their fingers together, to draw strength from her hold or give her what's left of his. Maybe there isn't a real difference anyhow. _Silence is a lifetime_ , he thinks, _silence is a lifetime_. She breaks it eventually, voice clear and steady when she speaks, "I've been standing still for _so_ long and I just… I have to know that we're in this together. I _need_ to know that we're moving forward _together_."

"Why wouldn't we?"

"Because I _can't_ promise you anything. Okay? I can't tell you that I'll be magically cured next year. And I just—" She interrupts herself, clears her throat, momentarily choking on a silent sob that shatters his heart into pieces. "I need you to realize that. I need you to _understand_ that, so you don't wake up one day and…"

She trails off.

(… _hate me_ , this tiny, tiny voice behind his ribs continues for him, _you're going to wake up one day and hate me because of everything I did to you and everything I didn't do and everything I could've done better and everything I should've done and didn't_ …)

"I'm asking _so_ much of you already, I know that, I _do_ , but part of me—I just—it's stupid, _selfish_ , and unfair but…" This is her, at her most vulnerable; this is him, bleeding for repentance at her feet. Exposed and naked, her heart flat and twitching between his fingers as she sits atop all his regrets and Chicago reminding her of times that had all but drained her. Determinedly, she holds his gaze, like he is holding her hand, like she is holding his failures, like he is holding her heart, like she is holding his love (and he wishes he felt worthy of the devotion flaming up in the dark brown of her eyes). "Part of me still wants you to want me."

"I _do_. I love you." Feeling slightly desperate now, he scoots closer so that he can cup her cheeks, so that he can make her _see_ what she doesn't want to, what she can't, and he thinks, his stomach clenching anxiously, he thinks, what a funny picture they must make, the both of them, here, in this tub, _begging_ for love and too fearful to take it. But one of them has to be brave. "Whatever the future brings, okay? And, and, whatever it _doesn't_ bring. We'll figure it out. We always do."

She doesn't believe him. She doesn't point it out, she doesn't say a word, but he can tell. She is looking at him and gifts him _that_ smile that stretches her mouth whenever she thinks she knows better than him, whenever she thinks whatever is ahead of them is inevitable, and Toby wonders if she wonders if they are doomed to repeat their history all over again, and he wonders if maybe she wonders if _his_ promises are empty and meaningless in the echoes of their conversation, and briefly he wonders if she wonders why he isn't fixing their situation like he always used to.

(…and he wonders when _she_ will wake up and finally see him for who he is, and then wonders when she will figure out that he is not the honorable man she has made him out to be, wonders if he is allowed to believe his own words…)

"We'll figure it out, Spence," he repeats firmly, mirroring her slow nod. "One step at the time."

* * *

"…and _then_ I had a complete mental breakdown in the _bathtub_ of all places like the good little poster child for mental stability that I am and proceeded to accuse him of not being 'committed' enough because clinginess hath a name and it is Spencer."

Aria takes that in, then halts in her movements, free hand hovering just above the clothes rack, the other one rocking the stroller gently as her eyes shape into two identical circles. "You think Ezra and I hate each other?

Exhaling a sigh though swiftly moderating her expression before a frown of discontent can take over fully, Spencer picks one of the dresses in front of her at random, holds it against her frame, turning to her right to inspect her reflection in the mirror. Mirror Spencer stares back, scrunches up her nose, obviously unimpressed. "I've _literally_ been monologuing about this for ten minutes straight and that's _all_ you got from it?"

"No… _yes_ ," Aria admits on Spencer's raised eyebrows, rocking the stroller back and forth a bit more firmly when Oscar comments the lack of well-deserved attention on him with a frustrated, little wail, shaking his arms angrily— _look at me, look at me_ —his face all anger, no mercy. _Same here, kid_ , Spencer muses, pressing her lips into a thin line and tentatively holding up a different dress which Aria pulls a grimace at, so she shrugs and returns it to its previous place. "I had no idea that's—why would you _say_ that?"

"I didn't mean…" Spencer breaks off, pushing her tongue into her cheek, struggling to find the right words or any words while painfully aware of a pair of blue eyes following their bickering from afar. Oscar, meanwhile, seems hellbent on reentering the spotlight or perhaps proving the theory of gravitation as he throws his elephant on the floor, cooing in excitement when his mom bends to pick it up without a word of acknowledgement for his misery. "It's—it wasn't supposed to be an insult. I just pointed out that you guys seem frustrated with each other sometimes."

" _Frustrated_ ," Aria echoes and furrows her eyebrows. Then, as if it has taken her a good second to fully comprehend the meaning of the word, she demands, slightly scandalized, "Frustrated?!"

Spencer winces. "I mean—it's—"

"I'm not _frustrated_ with Ezra."

"Are you kidding me? I can't even remember the last time we talked where you didn't complain about him one way or another," Spencer blurts without thinking, watching her words leave her mouth and coil around the pair of them like a toxic snake, before her brain awakens with a start, catches up, and she wishes she hadn't said anything at all, and then she also kind of wishes she _knew_ when to shut her damn mouth. They stare at each other for a beat until Spencer clears her throat and adds, a bit sheepishly, "I'm sorry, I didn't—"

" _Frustrated_ ," Aria mumbles quietly, shaking her head as she maneuvers herself and the stroller (Oscar flailing his arms like a fish out of water) to the other part of the store.

Well, that could've gone worse, Spencer thinks grimly, turning her attention to the other clothes rack. She watches her friend who is promptly joined by Emily in her quest for a new skirt. Had she indeed managed to piss off Emily, for example, she surely would have had to deal with very uncomfortable truths of her own—things she knows on some level to be true, like, _wow, you're simultaneously suffocating Toby and pushing him away_ or _you know, Spence, it's really arrogant of you to expect him to have thought about solutions to problems you might come up with while you were broken up_.

She had never thought she would ever be _grateful_ for the ongoing awkwardness between them.

Catching slight movement form the corner of her eye, she glances up at the person joining _her_.

Not that her current option is really that much better than Emily though.

"That's not your color," Alison remarks in a casual, lighthearted tone and Spencer stills, sighing an annoyed sigh – annoyed at Ali, yeah, but for the most part annoyed at that tiny, self-conscious part of herself that immediately abandons her own thoughts and chooses to _listen_ – and inspects a different dress. " _Oh honey_. That's not your color either. Here, try this."

Spencer wordlessly accepts her not-so-gentle suggestion and moves over to the mirror. She has no doubt that the blonde has seen and _heard_ everything and is swiftly confirmed in her suspicion when Alison doesn't appear to be even mildly confused at her subsequent question, "So what's the verdict? Am I an asshole?"

"Probably," Alison responds with a slight shrug of her shoulders and crosses her arms over her chest, watching Spencer spin sideways, backwards, forward in front of the mirror. "But I don't think I'm the right person to ask that kind of question."

"Probably," Spencer agrees distractedly, hauling the dress over her arm and walking further into the store, idly noting that Alison is following her like a persistent stray, intent to be taken home and adopted. She doesn't turn around to check but she is almost certain that there is an amused smirk playing at the other woman's mouth, not taking offense at her statement, instead gleeful, in silent agreement.

Sometimes it's quite terrifying, how easy it is to talk to her. How _easy_ it is for her to understand Spencer in ways none of the others do, not really. It used to scare her half to death, a lifetime of trauma ago, how unnervingly similar they are, she remembers that, remembers the taste of _dread_ then clouding her nights and days. And even just a few months ago, that she remembers as well, her blood would freeze with uncertainty, with raw powerlessness, at Alison effortlessly grasping Spencer's anger – _god, why is she always so damn angry_ – and shutting it down with her Jenna-like, sugar-sweet drawl, that damned tone of voice she had already grown to despise at fourteen.

She thinks of Aria and her mountain of pity (never wanting to get the mind-boggling puzzle she had deemed her friend, always mustering her with those widened eyes and a chorus of _oh, poor little Spencer_ playing on a loop). She thinks of Hanna and her mountain of guilt (showering her with continuous and likely unwarranted understanding these days, as though she is attempting to pacify something inside the pieces of her own heart, as though she thinks of Spencer as an unreasonable, ticking timebomb that has to be kept happy _or else_ ). She thinks of Emily and her mountain of wrath (and someday, they will explode, all these polite, proper and _awkward_ dances around one another leading to a horrible crash somewhere down the line, and Em, she won't hold back, not like Aria and Hanna are doing, and _god_ , she wonders if Hanna _knows_ about the light post, and that's why they are acting like she is on suicide watch). And she thinks of Alison and…

Well, she supposes if there absolutely _had_ to be someone who could actually make sense of the constant mess within her, it would be the only other resident of _Self-Destruction St, Bitch-Town_.

She harrumphs to ground herself back in reality, toys with the fabric of the dress on the faceless mannequin posing in an exaggerated way no woman would be able to mimic without risking a ruptured disk. It's black, a safe color, one that makes her feel both in control and comfortably invisible though she has to remind herself that it's not exactly a color fit for the occasion they'd gone out shopping in the first place: Emily is expecting them to come to an event for…whatever she is rallying for now, affordable psychiatric medication, climate change awareness, childhood leukemia, increased funding for women's shelters, _something_ , she honestly forgot. She doesn't _need_ new clothes per se; she is sure she would be able to find something hidden inside her closet but the numbers on her banking app are making her anxious—like she _needs_ to spend it, just in case someone comes in and takes it away again.

Leave it to her to be freaked out by safety. By comfort. By things going _well_.

Posterchild for mental fucking stability, as she had said.

Leave it to Alison to pick up on it.

"I don't know about Ezra and Aria," Alison says, resting her arms on the clothes rack and resting her chin on her arms, the very rough translation of her words boiling down to, _I don't_ care _about Ezra and Aria._ Spencer swallows her sigh of irritation, moving around the blonde to stare at the other mannequin presenting a short, tight dress a previous version of her would have wasted on a Saturday night, only to sit bored (and lonely) at some bar, nursing one too many drinks while answering e-mails from work on her phone. She touches the fabric again, tilting her head to the side, wondering if Toby would like to sit bored at a bar this Saturday night with her. "I _do_ have some thoughts on your Chicago… situation, however."

"That's really amazing, Ali. Congratulations. I have thoughts too. Lots of them," Spencer shoots back dryly, heaving said dress over her arm as well, ignoring the raised eyebrow Alison chooses to comment it with. "I mostly keep them to myself. It's very satisfying. You should try it too."

"If you actually knew how to keep 'most of your thoughts to yourself', you wouldn't have half the issues you do, Spencer."

"Okay. What is that supposed to mean?"

"Where do I even start?"

"Yeah, not at all, that's where," Spence retorts, click-clacking away from her but it's no use; the day Alison will voluntarily let her have the last word is the day hell freezes over, pigs learn how to fly, Wren quits oozing slime wherever he goes like a slug.

"You're stubborn," Alison says easily, click-clacking behind her, paying the other customers no mind. "You seriously lack tact. You have no filter. You're _constantly_ furious—"

"I'm a fire sign."

"How does someone who is allegedly 'so smart' keep manipulating herself, her life, the people around her just so that she ends up failing like she said she would?" Alison asks without it being a genuine question, sugar-sweet voice full in force. Spencer glares at her over her shoulder. Ali, however, remains unimpressed. "Seriously, are you _that_ obsessed with being right?"

A little farther to the left, Aria is letting herself be talked into trying on an olive-colored cardigan by the store clerk and Emily is holding Oscar in her arms, bouncing him along to the Lady Gaga song playing on the radio. Their eyes meet for a second, then Spencer looks away.

Finally halting in her quest to run away, Spencer exhales a breath, spins to gaze back at Alison, shoulders slumping in the direction of the floor, signaling her submission, her defeat. "Fine. Let it all out, then. You obviously have a _lot_ to say. Go on."

"Yeah, quit whining. I'm not gonna do this self-pity party thing with you," Ali states—all teeth, no bite as she thrusts a shirt into her arms for her to try on. "This isn't _about_ me. Do you really think this is fun to me? Trying to talk sense into your thick head?"

"Actually, I do."

"Then _actually_ , you're wrong. As usual. This is exhausting and I'd rather be looking for dresses. None of them – not Aria, not Hanna, not Em, _absolutely_ not Toby – will ever tell you the truth though because they love you too much and don't want to hurt your precious feelings."

(She isn't particularly proud of it but something decides to forgo everything else Alison spits at her and hyper-focuses on the tiniest detail instead; twitches—a very loud, a very ugly, an almost _ancient_ instinct—at Toby's name between her pink lips, her forming, carrying and then speaking it with casualness, lightheartedness. She pushes it away before it can fester, winces at her worst, internally curses herself.)

"Wow. I must be lucky to have _you_ in my life," Spencer says. "Come on. Hit me with your best shot."

"Not joining your pity party, Spence."

Spencer's skin briefly prickles with intense frustration. "Okay. Then what _do_ you want?"

The corners of Alison's mouth quirk. Barely, yet it's there, noticeable, as if she is contemplating the taste of whatever she might speak on her tongue first, weighing her words with care, doing a test run, and it occurs to Spencer then that this is likely not easy for her either. As well as they communicate _in theory_ , their nonsense language mostly the same, created under a mantle of too many defense mechanisms and endless projection masked as clever sarcasm, opening up freely is neither woman's favorite past-time activity, least of all to teach other. If she has to be honest, she wouldn't want to admit it aloud, some moments of satisfaction too _mean_ to share, but seeing Alison struggle gives her a morbid sense of joy.

"Give you a piece of advice. That you should've heard, like, _ages_ ago," Alison finally responds, not reacting or choosing not to hear Spencer's mutter of _lucky me_. "Grow the fuck up."

Spencer blinks at her, raising her eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Grow up. Deal with your bullshit. Get over it. Stop wallowing in self-pity. I don't know which one of those you need to hear the most but maybe one of them will stick."

She is certain her eyebrows are about to disappear in her hairline any moment. " _Excuse me?_ "

Alison's lip twitch again, her knuckles white around the handle of her bag. Somewhere behind them, Oscar guffaws, excitedly kicking his legs and flailing his arms in Emily's secure grasp as she dances across the aisles with him, not a single care in the world.

"Trust me when I say that I know what I'm talking about," Alison reasons none-too-gently, her eyes flitting between the shirt section and Spencer's and back. "You're searching for problems when there aren't any. And when you come up empty, you keep _creating_ problems for yourself."

Spencer purses her lips, suddenly overly interested in a white blouse that looks like every other white blouse hanging in her closet, complete with a matching blazer and skirt and all.

"You know I'm right."

"I didn't say that."

"Well, _I'm_ saying it," Alison continues in a hushed voice, as though they are back in Rosewood, gossiping about Sadie Jameson's ugly new haircut during lunch break. Fortunately, she appears more than uncomfortable at the shift in their conversation as well (that _she_ had bought on, thank you very much, and really, nobody told her to do just that) because she starts going through the blazers too, intent to refuse eye contact beyond a few glances here and there that could be easily mistaken for accidental. "Look, I get it. It's confusing for stuff to work out for once in your life, so you're convinced that there's, like, a hidden clause somewhere. Some kind of trap. You think everything's about to blow up in your face because you have this, like, really terrible feeling—"

"Are you sure that I'm the only one around here who needs therapy?"

Alison gives her a look. "It'd be helpful if you actually listened to what I'm saying."

"I'm listening!"

"You're not," Alison chides as she checks the price tag on a cute blouse that would undoubtedly look lovely on her, but what she sees seems to scare her off immediately because she snorts and stuffs it back right away, moving onto a different one. _Teacher salaries_. "So I'm gonna try and put this as nicely as I can: stop trying to ruin stuff for yourself all the time. Stop actively looking for problems. _Get over it_."

_Dr. Mizrahi would love this_ , Spencer thinks, somewhat grimly, but then presses out between her clenched teeth, not at all meaning it, not at all unaware that Alison can tell, "I'm over it."

"You're not." Alison holds up a jacket against her own frame, humming with undecided interest as she tils her head to the side. "And all I'm saying is, if you keep this up, you're gonna end up, like, old and miserable and lonely."

"Yeah, been there, done that," Spencer replies, shrugs her shoulders lightly. "Well, the miserable and lonely part. Not sure about the old part."

"You have no idea what loneliness even means."

"Don't try to play the Pain Olympics with me, Alison. Not now."

"I'm not playing the 'Pain Olympics' with you," Alison says, mimicking her shrug, blue eyes twinkling with something akin to mischief, to triumph. "I mean, _if_ I were, I'd probably remind you that I spent a good portion of my youth on the run. Or maybe tell you that half of my family is dead. That I was married to a literal scam artist. Or that I ruin basically every relationship I touch. But that's neither here nor there anyway. It's not like you'd survive a mile in my shoes."

Spencer rolls her eyes, amused though a tad too prideful to acknowledge it. "Yeah, I wouldn't. Your feet are smaller than mine."

Alison opens her mouth to construct a sarcastic remark but is cut short by Aria calling for their assistance. It's a devastating emergency, one that would have encouraged an _S.O.S_. message in their group chat back in Rosewood: Emily's indecisive mutters of encouragement ("I think they look both very nice! I think you look pretty in both!") aren't helping Aria much with her choice between Identical Dress #1 and Identical Dress #2. The two women exchange a look, walk over to their friends, the rest of their impromptu therapy session— _intervention?_ —put on hold.

_Thank fuck._

She comes home later than expected, her mind heavier than expected, heart fuller than expected too, and finds traces of him, strewn around like clues, wondrous comfort and familiarity, before she can even fully detect, consciously _register_ his presence. Briefly, and perhaps influenced by the sticky residue of memories past stirring in the wake of her meeting with the girls, she tenses up at the sounds coming from her kitchen. Until she catches sight of a familiar jacket slung over the back of the armchair where she usually throws hers and her fingers reach for it compulsively, shaking out the leather before picking it up and hanging up the jacket with her own.

There, under the coat rack, she finds his shoes, neatly taken off and put together, in such a stark contrast to his jacket just thrown there, a habit she has no doubt he has unwillingly gotten from her. The whole place smells like food, the hissing and sizzling of oil daring her to make her way to the kitchen as they make her mouth water, and she isn't entirely surprised to see yet another fresh bouquet wordlessly greeting her from the coffee table. It's a thing he does, and he does it a lot, stubborn not to let her make a big deal out of it. Just getting her all these gorgeous, colorful flowers whose names escape her quickly after he tells her, and leaving them everywhere. Tables, desks, windowsills and counters; willing her apartment into a garden with love letters that turn the air sweet, and with it, turning her heart into one too, a whole fucking greenhouse of pretty poetry and promises. She feels a puddle of warmth in her stomach, lazily drifting lower.

"Hey," Toby says when he hears her enter the kitchen. He smiles at her, eyes big and childlike, and leans down a bit so she can press a chaste kiss to his cheek. "Did you have fun?"

"Hi." She kisses him once and then, overcome by joy and love, holds both his cheeks for a beat longer, pressing another kiss to his stubble and another and another. Satisfied or at least satisfied for _now_ , she releases him so he can turn back to their dinner. "Yeah. Lots of fun was had." Toby raises his eyebrows at the sarcastic dip of her tone, but she waves it off. "Never mind. I got you a new pair of jeans, by the way, so you can finally stop wearing… whatever _those_ are."

"They're fine."

"They're not."

"They're comfortable."

"They're falling apart," she reasons, tugging at his belt loop and ignoring the second eyebrow of the evening he gives her in response. Regardless, he _does_ seem a bit flustered now, she notes, as he stirs the food lazily and she hungrily takes in his half-blushing profile, the warmth below her heart briefly flaming up again, licking below her navel. Feeling mischievous, challenged to see how much further she can take this, she moves to stand behind him, snaking her arms around his middle and speaking mostly into the fabric of his shirt, "I might… you know, I might have bought you a couple of new shirts too, for your interviews? Can you try them on? Later?"

"Did you even buy yourself anything?"

"Maybe," she responds, keeping her voice light and somehow _sensing_ the smirk stretching his mouth despite not being able to see his features from the position they are in, "though I feel like what I bought for myself is probably more interesting to you than me."

A beat.

Then, to his credit, he starts stirring the food again, almost unbothered. Almost. Not really. She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip to keep herself from snickering. He says, mimicking her tone of voice from before, "Huh. Interesting. Can you try them on? Later?"

"You're _so_ easy, Cavanaugh."

"For you, always," he says simply, making her heart flutter, reaching behind him to poke at her hipbone. "C'mere, have a taste and tell me if it's any good."

She grumbles her protest but reappears from behind him anyhow, then taken by surprise by the lavish twinkle in his eyes mustering her intently, his gaze traveling over her body, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. She feels her stomach swoop, her heart lurch once more, and she almost has the mind to shame herself for reacting so violently to everything that is him but it's comfortable, easy, to be free with him, to be shameless with him, to be violently in love with him. So instead she goes for his beautiful mouth again, briefly brushing her tongue against his when he chuckles in the same surprise that she had felt. When she pulls back, she hums. "Hm. Yeah. It's good."

He shakes his head at her in mock-annoyance. "Who's easy now?"

"Still you," she remarks, snorting at his facial expression, at his hand flying to his chest as if to say _who, me?_ , and unceremoniously pulls herself up onto the counter—

"Hey, watch out for your—"

—promptly hitting her head on the kitchen cabinet in the process. She makes a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat, squeezes her eyes shut, aware of Toby's hand feeling her forehead and scalp. "For your head," he finishes lamely. "You're like a toddler."

"I keep your life exciting."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever have to drive you to the hospital," he says, standing between her legs now as he silently offers her a spoon. He adds exaggerated airplane noises when she doesn't open her mouth to his invitation right away which earns him a rightful swat on the chest. Taking the spoon from him, she laps at it, gives another happy hum, nearly sliding into a moan. "What do you think? Needs more salt?"

She licks at her lower lip, gleefully notes his eyes drifting for a beat or two. "No, no, it's perfect exactly like this," she assures and—to his obvious irritation—tries (and fails) to throw the spoon into the sink rather than handing it back to him. Sighing, he bends to pick it up with a (rightful) look in her direction, so she goes on, a tad hastily, a tad girlish innocence purposely woven into her tone of voice, "Thank you so much for feeding me, Mr. Cavanaugh. I think I was at risk of malnutrition from my takeout diet before you came in and saved me."

He rolls his eyes at her, turning back to the stove. "You're still on dish duty."

"Worst. Cook. Ever."

After dinner, Toby barely manages to stifle his yawn behind the back of his hand as he browses their Netflix account for a TV show to watch. She isn't really feeling it, however, instead sitting with her back against his side, his arm loosely thrown over her frame while she scrolls through her social media feed, shoving her phone into his face whenever she stumbles upon something mildly interesting, funny or irritating so they can get angry together (which is normally just _her_ spiraling into yet another nonsensical ramble about politics, really, but he's a fucking champion and hums his agreement). She is bored out of her mind by the time the third episode starts, head half in his lap, relentlessly poking at his chin dimple to get his attention. She blows an annoyed raspberry when it doesn't work, throws her phone on the coffee table, and asks, pushing at his jaw firmly when he attempts to escape her torment by slowly leaning out of reach, "Can we do something else?"

He peeks down at her from the corner of his eye and begins combing through her hair, like some sort of peace offering. "What do you wanna do?"

"I don't know." She mulls it over for a moment. They _could_ play a round of cards, she supposes, but she isn't in the mood to lose, which she is sure she will, now that he has moved on from the tentative beginnings and actually figured the damned game out. Whatever movie they pick, she is going to be fast asleep before the credits roll in, so that isn't an option either. Eventually, she shrugs and wonders, playing with his fingers in her grasp, "Wanna have sex?"

He proceeds to cock an eyebrow at her and bursts out laughing, the pleasant rumble, the echoes of it vibrating in his chest against her ear inevitably making her laugh as well, albeit somewhat sheepishly. "Did… did you just go through all our options in your head and _then_ settled for sex 'cuz you couldn't come up with anything else?"

"Are _you_ refusing?"

Of course he isn't; he has never been one to turn down an offer like that, no matter how horribly unromantic and yet sickeningly comfortably long-term, and she finds herself flat on her stomach about thirty minutes later ( _after_ putting the dry dishes away, _after_ tidying up the living room as well, _after_ running a brush through her hair so that his fingers don't get trapped in it again like they had the other day), gripping the sheets and stifling her voice in her-his-their pillow. Later, then, once her legs start feeling like legs once more, she stretches, crawls against his chest, feels spent, unable to wipe that almost drunken smile off her features even if she wanted to (and she doesn't). She pulls the damp sheets over them, wedging her feet beneath his body to warm back up.

"No smoking," he mumbles into the crown of her head, voice flooded with fatigue, one sluggish hand ghosting over her hip before it settles on her lower back, attempting to get her even closer into his side. Eventually, she obliges but only after he emits a sort of whine into the quiet of the bedroom, slings her leg around him, stomach lightly contracting at his thigh right between hers, at the evidence of their love-making mixing with fresh arousal gently flaming up ( _already_? she reprimands herself warily, chewing her lower lip, pushes it away for—for later, perhaps, should they not succumb to sleep first).

"I forgot them in my bag anyways," she whispers into his skin, caressing his chest with the tips of her fingers where she can feel his heart struggle to slip back into a calm, steady rhythm. "So, I had this thought…"

"Uh-oh." She tilts her head all the way back to make a face at him, grimacing when he chuckles and pokes her nose. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm serious now. We're serious now. So you had this thought…? Like, right _now_ …?"

"On my way home, actually," she clarifies, putting her head where it belongs; its resting place, in the dip of his neck, as though formed just for her. "I was stuck in traffic and there was nothing on the radio. Nothing worthwhile, anyway. I had a lot of time to think is what I'm saying."

"Oh good. I was about to take offense."

She can't help it; she _giggles_ , grazing his stomach with her fingernails, letting her eyelids flutter shut at his subsequent laughter. Subdued, gentle, quiet and so deliciously sweet; a pretty melody, a pretty lullaby.

But she needs to focus.

"You were thinking…?"

There's an air of serenity in their cocoon of afterglow bliss, the outside world held back, blocked by the closed bedroom door, but she doesn't have the slightest idea as to where to _begin_. It feels like the time to be flippant so she supposes that she could try flippant and says, "We spend _way_ too much money on gas."

"Hm," he makes after a short beat or two, sounding confused. "I mean, yeah. Probably. I guess."

She swallows her sigh, feeling silly (stupid) for doing all this in the echoes of their (disastrous?) conversation in Chicago, Ali's voice from the store ringing like bells inside her head – _grow the fuck up_ , she says, _grow the fuck up_ – and responds, half-angry at her insecurities still preventing her from speaking the whole truth, "There has to be a more…a more financially, uh, mature and ecofriendly solution."

She can hear the furrowed eyebrows in Toby's tone. "Are you… do you wanna buy a hybrid?"

The lack of effortless clarity is frustrating to the point that she can feel an army of panicky ants climb over her naked form, making her insides prickle with apprehension and the urge to angrily tear off her skin and nails, because he _has_ to, he just _has_ to grasp without having to try, untangle the gravity, the insanity of—he just _has_ to, that's what Toby does, he reads her mind and reads her _heart_ , unwraps her inner working like a gift rather than a puzzle, recognizes her intents way before she can, and he _has_ to—and it dawns on her, somewhere in the back of her muddled (and _selfish_ ) mind, that maybe _she_ has to… small steps, right, small baby steps towards figuring out life together, extend an olive branch and all, do her part, _grow the fuck up_ , stop ruining shit for the sake of proving herself right, and really, perhaps it's a little unfair too, expecting him to hold answers to questions she doesn't dare ask aloud, maybe it's _her_ who has to… who has to…

Now emitting that sigh she had unsuccessfully attempted to bury within, she throws the blanket aside, clambering to her feet.

"Spence?"

"Just—just wait a second," she tells him over her shoulder, reaching for a hair tie on the bedside table and taming her hair on the way out; a woman on a mission or with a mission, one of those. She returns to the room a couple of minutes later, spots him now perched against the headboard of her bed, a tousled mop of hair framing his sleepy features, eyebrows once more neatly drawn together in befuddlement. She is still naked; naked, sweaty, likely overly pink in the face, thighs sticky, and stumbling about the place like a newborn pony, and she feels slightly graceless until his gaze drops. To his credit, though, it's merely for a split moment, cleverly masked as innocent curiosity directed at the object in her hand that she is holding onto like her life is depending on it, before it finally comes back up, searching her eyes for an explanation.

"So you had this thought," he reminds her flatly.

"Yes. I had this thought." Clearing her throat, Spencer sits beside him, folding her legs beneath her thighs, close enough to touch yet far enough to give him space to listen, to take in her words first, to consider. The numb fingers of her unoccupied hand find the sheets again, playing with them a bit absentmindedly, and she follows the pattern her index finger is tracing with her eyes, catching slight movement from her left, idly notes him pulling up his legs to get comfortable in preparation for what she is planning on telling him. "So, um—look, I know this is _probably_ sort of hypocritical of me and I always have the _worst_ timing ever and to be honest with you, I don't even _know_ whether we only paused that fight we had in Chicago or if we talked it out and we're fine now, but-"

Without a word of interruption or forewarning, really, his fingers brush against hers, slowly yet quite boldly slipping into the free space between them, forcing her to redirect her eyes, forcing her to refocus. When she feels confident enough to glance up, she finds his eyes imploring hers, finds them sincere, watchful, soft. The sweet heave of her heart tugs at the corners of her mouth, paints a (smitten) smile on her face. She babbles, practically _vomits_ , and she isn't totally certain whether he can follow the speed of her words shooting from her mouth in an incoherent, Aria-like jumble of despair, wide-eyed and wincing at the prospect of rejection, "Actually, I did have this, speech prepared that I practiced in the car and I was going to tell you it would be _so_ much smarter if you moved here. And I was planning on telling you that my place's way bigger than yours anyway, and that Boston's pretty but expensive and then I pictured you telling me the same thing about Chicago, and I would've said something witty you'd have laughed about-"

"Spence…"

"And then I would've told you that we could be saving money—not just, you know, gas money, but rent and heating and electricity, if you moved in…with… _me_? And then I would've told you that they need architects everywhere and that I'm _aware_ that I can't just expect you to put your life on pause and follow me around like a puppy but then I would've made sure to remind you that I _tried_ to be selfless for once and told you to pursue that internship in New York and it was _you_ —not _me_ , it was _you_ who refused and said you would rather be with me…and we, you know, we weren't even together at that point so, really, I did my best, and I think as your—as your girlfriend, I should be respecting your dreams, and if this is where you wanna stay, who am I to tell you otherwise?"

"Spencer."

"But aside from being way more practical…no, actually, you know what. Fuck that. That was an alibi that I came up with to seem less clingy. I don't really give a damn about all the practical reasons. I just… it's a step that we should be making." He falls silent again, but he is watching her with an amused twinkle glimmering at her from behind his pretty eyes. Confused, she takes it in, wordless, unsure what to do with it, but notices the situation calling for a firm nod in order to emphasize her conviction, so she reciprocates his stare, nods vigorously. "It's the right thing to do. It feels right to me. We're in a stage in our lives where…I mean, we aren't kids anymore, this isn't reckless or _impulsive_ , we're adults and we have jobs, and god, it's not like we only got together yesterday. Maybe this is too fast for _you_ and you wanna take it slow after everything with—I mean, I know _I_ said I was a little freaked out in Chicago, but I'm really just freaked out 'cuz I tend to bulldoze over every good thing I ever build for myself-"

"Spence."

"What I know is that all this, this overthinking is giving me serious migraines on a daily basis, and this _hesitancy_ and 'taking it slow'—we're acting like cowards, Toby, like we didn't learn a damn thing from the past six years…" She trails off, exhales soundly, shows him the insides of her palm, her spare keys. His keys. His keys on that _stupid_ keychain with that _stupid_ miniature Chevrolet she had spent an embarrassing amount of time searching for. "I've been carrying these around like a fucking crazy person. I had them in Chicago with me and I was gonna give them to you on DuSable and then in our hotel room and over dinner and in the tub but then, of course, I had a breakdown because, as previously mentioned, I am a crazy person-"

"Can I _please_ say something-"

"Not yet." She places the keys inside his open palm, closes his fingers around them, draws back, to give him space, to let him take it in, to let him _consider_. "It's…we've been here before, okay? Been there, done that, almost had a baby and ended up with a lousy 'Broke up anyway' t-shirt. We've been here before, with you in Rosewood, me in D.C, and it's not the same distance, but we _failed_. Things have changed. I know they have. But I refuse, I can't do it again, Toby, where you're over there in Boston doing your thing, and I'm over here doing my thing, and we maybe see each on the weekends or even every _other_ weekend because something _always_ comes up… I can't do this, this 'someday' bullshit or vague promises that we both know are never going to come true because we're both too afraid to… to overstep boundaries or invisible lines and make the other one compromise. We're both too afraid to _demand_."

Her lousy ponytail is coming undone atop her head, little ringlets at the back of her neck sticking out everywhere. She feels cold and exposed. "Look, I'm… this isn't an ultimatum or anything, okay? It'll _never_ be an ultimatum. It doesn't have to be here in Worcester. To be honest, Boston's not where I want to live but I'm saying I'll move if you want me. In a heartbeat. And I'll never say a damn word. We can look for a bigger place… or squeeze all my stuff into your bungalow and crash into one another while we're getting ready in the mornings. I only…I only want some kind of timeline, Toby. I'll even take a really vague one. I just want…"

"Commitment?"

She looks up. His head is cocked to the side, patiently awaiting his turn. "Yeah. Commitment," she repeats his words back to him or maybe _her_ words from the bathtub in their little hotel room in Chicago. "And like I said, it's… it's really hypocritical, because I'm not giving you anything in return 'cuz I don't _know_ , but I do know that I wanna be with you, and I want you to want to be with me and… gas money. Rent. Other reasons I forgot."

"Am I allowed to say something?" he questions, blue eyes alight with amusement of the softest kind as his hand goes to cup her cheek. She leans into his touch, like a moth to the flame, noting only how starved for him she had been when his thumb slowly swipes over the blush still spread across her skin, a blotch of pink stretching down her neck and chest. She nods absently, hanging onto his lips, stomach contracting once again when his finger traces down her neck, then seems to decide against venturing farther for now and drops from her entirely. She would have scowled if she could, but she can't, because his response is unexpected, "Okay."

She waits but that's all she gets – well _that_ , and a smile playing at his mouth, his eyes softening further, the keys dangling in his grasp. "'Okay'?" she echoes. "'Okay' what?"

"'Okay' as in 'Okay, let's move in together'," he retorts, tone relaxed, posture comfortable, the keys jingling as he throws them from one hand into the other, back and forth, and Spencer, she almost, _almost_ thinks, _damn you; damn you for making everything so easy_ , and then she almost, _almost_ doesn't think, _oh thank god; thank god for you_. "I keep finding your hair ties and make-up and cigarettes everywhere in my apartment anyway. Plus, it'd be nice to get my shirts back."

Dizziness slowly creeps up on her and she has to admit that the dazzling smile he sends her way isn't helping matters. "What's that supposed to mean, 'okay, let's move in together'?" And then, where denial had had a quick yet victorious reign, something akin to frustration begins bubbling over. "You—!" She shoves his shoulder. "Why didn't you _say_ something instead of letting me–"

He grabs her hand, pulls her flush against him, doesn't seem all _too_ surprised when she instantly uses that opportunity to sit astride his lap, curling up against his shoulder. "Well, you wouldn't _let_ me say anything," he responds in a mumble, stroking over her back. She can kind of feel the keychain bump over her flesh too (and it's kind of embarrassing that the mere thought turns her on). "Really, you didn't need this whole—you could've _asked_ , and I would've said _yes_. Even without the whole… gas money and rent stuff." He nuzzles the side of her face, makes her heart stumble, and again she thinks, _thank god for you_. "What part of 'I love you and I wanna be with you' is so hard for you to understand, hm?"

"All parts?" she admits. "I mean, I'm _working_ on it but…"

Nudging the side of her face until she finally lifts her head from his shoulder, gazes at him from under her lashes, he holds her chin, thumb sinking into her dimple. "Well, then I guess I'll have to start 'working' on making you understand too, how's that sound?"

She smiles. "So you really wanna live with me, huh?"

"Uh-huh."

"That means you're gonna get the _whole_ shebang," Spencer reminds him, intentionally knitting a vague air of eeriness into her tone of voice. "I mean all those parts I've mostly kept from you. The weird food cravings…" He cocks an eyebrow at her. "The unhealthy obsession with reality TV." His eyebrows are drawn together. "My tendency to leave my shit everywhere…"

"'Mostly kept from me'," Toby repeats dryly, squirming when she attacks his neck with several playful bites. "But yeah, I want the 'whole shebang'. I want your blanket-hogging, your grumpy face in the morning, the coffee that could very well wake the dead, your impulsivity that's worse than a three-year-old on sugar."

"Damn, your girlfriend sounds like a catch," she mutters into the warmth of his skin, soothing the most recent bite with her tongue after he hisses not-so-softly.

"No need to get jealous," he answers. "Not everyone can be as flawless as _your_ boyfriend."

At that, she straightens up, shoots him a look that lures a snicker out of him, hands gripping her hips, the keychain pressing against her side. "You _so_ don't wanna do this right now."

"Try me."

"You _laugh_ in your sleep. It's creepy."

"You _snore_."

"You _rarely_ put away your laundry on time and instead leave it in a pile for _days_."

"I've personally witnessed you buy underwear instead of doing your laundry more than once."

"Well, how's this, Mr. I-Have-An-Excuse-For-Everything: why do you leave your damn towels on the bathroom floor? It's annoying and it's disgusting."

"That's a fair complaint, I'll give you that," he agrees, nodding. "But speaking of disgusting, I have never seen _you_ remove your hair from the drain. What's up with that?"

She purses her lips some more. "If it bothers you so much, you should be the one doing it then."

"I _am_ the one doing it," he counters with a laugh. "Because _you_ manage to clog it once a month."

"Okay, you know what, kiss my ass."

"With pleasure."

She hasn't even fully registered his words or the implications of them when Toby suddenly flips them over, enticing a squeal of surprise out of her as she quickly gets on her knees, tries to crawl away to safety, only to be stopped by strong hands encircling her ankle and pulling her back to him. She giggles, happiness blooming in the pits of her stomach, happiness and flames igniting, his stubble tickling her skin as his lips brush against her spine, leaving gentle kisses, kisses that remind her of a different scene from a different life, and she turns to clay in his palms, she does.

Another squeak makes its way past her mouth when he _bites_ instead of kissing, and even though she suspects she might have deserved that for the marks she had left on his neck earlier, Spencer unceremoniously turns over before he can go onto continue his assault. She lies on her back in mock submission, caged in by his arms on either side of her head, his hips caged in by her legs. She gazes up at him, in amazement, in astonishment, bone-deep surrender to the way he makes her feel. "So we're really doing this?"

"Yeah. Yeah, we're really doing this," he confirms quietly. "And I—I don't care where we go. Whether it's here or Boston… as long as we're together, I don't care."

_As long as we're together_.

When he kisses her or she kisses him, she wonders, a quiet voice somewhere within, it wonders, _is this home? Is this what having a home feels like?_ A sweaty mess of entangled bodies atop an intricate mess of white sheets; is this what it means to have a home? His skin is warm under her hand, his hips almost lithe when he pushes inside her, eyes so bright she forgets to breathe, and she almost says, almost confesses, _oh, thank god for you_. Oh, thank god for this feeling of being here, of wholeness, of belonging, him giving himself to her (all he is, all he was, all he will be), her giving herself to him (all she is, all she was, all she will be). _Is this what it means to return home?_ she wonders and their hands are intertwined above her head, and his sighs taste like utter salvation on her tongue, sounds of flesh giving way to sounds of love, quietening her thoughts spiraling, pirouetting, dancing like tiny ballerinas… when she kisses him or he kisses her (soft, then hard; just a few, than many; deep, deeper, disappearing into one another), she thinks, yes.

She thinks, _yes, I'm home._

_I'm home, I'm home, I'm home._

_As long as we're together, I'm home_.

* * *

Summer comes, and as their friends are planning weddings (Hanna and Caleb squabbling over possible locations, themes, their budget), working on furthering their careers or attempting their comebacks (Aria slipping into some sort of writing-induced hypomania, typing away at another manuscript at every waking hour), changing the world step by step (Emily is in D.C. whenever she can afford to be, her Instagram plastered with catchy protest slogans and calls to action) and moving their lives around in search for _something_ ("Huh, that's weird," Spencer comments over dinner one night, "Ali's looking at apartments in Brooklyn?" and Toby supposes he ought to let her figure that one out herself), Spencer and Toby are graduating in _AP Giddy with Hormones_.

He doesn't renew his lease in June and what little furniture he _does_ own – and, as pathetic as it might be, it's not much by any means; life after the island had never become home, his routines more Spartan than anything, fitting for a soldier left with nothing to fight _for_ and instead plagued and haunted by enough to fight _against_ – will be stashed away in Ezra and Aria's storage unit until they decide what to do with it. The rest will remain where it currently is, either making the next tenant happy or so overwhelmed by the worn-out textures that they leave as quickly as he had.

Regardless, he feels gratitude. Excitement, too, and _bliss_ —so much goddamn bliss at the move, this amazingly new chapter of his life…of _their_ life. It still sounds too good to be true, still feels like a fucking daydream he had accidentally gotten lost and then drowned himself in. But there is something else too, underneath all that: a tiny, little twinge of nostalgia awakening in his left when they gather in his apartment one sunny weekend and he watches his belongings disappear in countless boxes one by one. It's hard not to. This place had marked an end, a relief, temporary as it might have been, to what had come _before_ , to what he had left behind. A passing sanctuary. Some bad memories, yes, but so many good ones too. He can't say he will _miss_ it per se but…

Spencer's hand atop his head pulls him from his thoughts. She ruffles his hair briefly when she passes him where he is crouched on the floor, taping the box in front of him shut. With a boyish smile, he looks up, eyes following her as she moves (and, oh, hips intentionally _swaying_ ) across the apartment to join Aria, who is carefully wrapping his dishware in old newspaper, and Oscar, who is confined in Toby's laundry basket – Spencer had dubbed it "baby jail" earlier to which her friend had merely given her an irritated huff. Humming loudly, she bends to free the littlest Fitz from his prison, bouncing him lightly in her arms and earning an ear-piercing, joyful squeal from him (and Toby's heart, it's soaring for a moment or perhaps two until he consciously wills it down, exhales a loud breath and writes "DRESSER" across the box in big, fat letters).

"We could get you on the next season of _The Confession Tapes_ ," she singsongs at Oscar, looking at him earnestly. "It could be a real tearjerker. You'll be a superstar."

Oscar takes that in with big, hazel eyes, blowing a raspberry that is mostly spit, then babbles an answer in response, unceremoniously reaching for Spencer's sparkly earring.

"Whoa, hey there," she reprimands him, gently grabbing hold of his hand before he can roughly close his fist around it and _pull_. " _Gentle_. I know you've just finished your sentence and all but I'm usually more of a foreplay girl."

"Not true," Toby can't stop himself from mumbling under his breath as he stuffs the folded ties and socks into the already overflowing box to his right, and it's quiet _enough_ though both friends catch it anyhow. Aria looks up, half-exasperated, half-surprised, and Spencer gifts him a highly amused smirk (that has the desired effect; he quickly clears his throat and focuses on his task).

"Oh, great. You've actually managed to taint _Toby_ of all people. Let's move onto my firstborn," Aria comments dryly against Oscar's giggle when Spencer bounces him again. "Honestly, could you please watch what you say in front of him now that he's about to start talking, like, any day?"

" _Murder_ ," Spencer coos at the baby. " _Gunshot wound. Physical trauma. Drug trafficking._ "

Aria rolls her eyes. "I'm never leaving you alone with him again."

Toby chuckles, his gaze drawn to the other side of the room, the storage unit pile. Spencer is… _particular_ about her taste; a side of her that is new to him as well. His plants had already found their way into her – _their_ , he corrects himself, _their, their, their_ – apartment weeks ago, Spencer loading them into her trunk cautiously with an overjoyed grin on her features, a cat that got the cream. His books, she had told him later, he could put wherever he wanted, though, of course, they would fit best in the study, _don't you think_? His mug collection that "is _so_ much cooler than mine anyway" would definitely look great above the kitchen sink, she had promised with a nod, playing with his fingers as they lay on the sofa, the happy twinkle inside her eyes in full force.

Other stuff, however, she seemingly isn't _too_ keen on compromising. Because this whole move had introduced Toby to another new-old-new detail he had previously missed, ignored or maybe even expertly avoided over the years: the _smile_. The slightly crooked, sparkly-eyed, eyebrows-curved, _my-way-or-the-highway_ smile. No other comment, just—just the smile, combined with a faux-pensive hum and that's it. His curtains had received the smile. His blinds had gotten the smile. The little painting on the wall behind the dining table, the one he remembers her actually _complimenting_ months ago, had received the smile. His damned _shower curtain_ – nothing fancy, nothing overly monotone; a light shade of gray with flowers on it, and she fucking _loves_ flowers – had received the smile. Neither Aria nor Ezra had appeared weirded out or even the slightest taken aback to watch their friend flash said smile his way more than once, leading him to suspect that others were familiar with it and it was just _him_ who hadn't been. He wonders how Younger Toby had managed to escape it for so damn long.

Well, until now.

He wipes his forehead on the back of his hand, gets up to his feet and hefts the now shut moving box onto the other. "Spence," he then calls, gesturing towards the floor when she lifts her gaze, looks over at him interestedly, "what about the rug?"

"The rug," Spencer echoes in a lighthearted voice, like she doesn't know what he is suggesting, still bouncing Oscar up and down, up and down inside her arms. "What about it? It's a rug."

"I think it's nice."

"Yeah. Yeah, um, it's…" She struggles to come up with an adjective, then struggles to keep _that_ smile at bay, Oscar meanwhile struggling to reach up and tug at her hair. "It's… very loud."

Just then, before Toby can reply, Ezra steps back into the apartment, carrying a little cup holder from the coffee place down the street. "All right, how about a coffee break?" he asks aloud and adds, after spotting Oscar squirming in Spencer's hold, "Ah. I see you've served your sentence."

"Yeah, he did, but if I were you, I'd be careful around him," Spencer warns him darkly as they switch baby for coffee and coffee for baby. "Prison life changed him. He isn't the son you once knew."

"And that's _still_ not funny," Aria remarks from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the material of her pants before accepting the paper cup Spencer dangles in front of her like a carrot.

"It's _nice_ ," Toby repeats once Spencer is close enough to him, gratefully taking the coffee from her.

"What now?"

"The _rug_. I think it's nice."

It's then that Toby becomes aware of the meaningful look that Aria is shooting Ezra; so damned aware that it feels all but _painful_ , although Ezra isn't nearly as perceptive as his wife, it appears, since he merely stands there, oblivious to her eyes searching his, slurping his coffee and instead inspecting the door, knocking and stroking, like he is trying to figure out what it's made of. So Toby takes a tiny sip as well, careful not to burn his tongue, directs his attention back to Spencer who is mustering him curiously, her hand coming up to fix his collar.

It's silly. He doesn't give a damn about the stupid rug. Or the curtains, the blinds, the paintings, the shower curtain. It's just – and here come the self-doubts, ever-present, ever-gnawing – part of him feels like a ruthless invader. Forcing her to carve out space for him in the life she'd been in the process of building before he came weaseling back into it. Forcing her to compromise, to accommodate, to squeeze and push him into the last few empty spaces she had deemed all right to intrude upon but only as far as she would allow. Perhaps it's awfully juvenile, petty, perhaps it's something inside him automatically resisting (while vehemently being poked by something vaguely Yvonne-shaped) but suddenly, the thought of abandoning the rug at the side of the road or leaving it here and stuffing it into the storage unit later to rot seems downright unacceptable.

He briefly thinks that in another life, he would have swallowed all of it and kept his silly mouth shut, but they are in this one, and this one, it's full of love and promises to _work_ on their slightly less-than-excellent communication skills, so he shrugs off his insecurities (not fully, never fully, but that's for another time, anyway) and decides to simply tell her as such… though with fewer words than he would like to, mindful of the ears and eyes listening and watching and judging.

He looks at her, lowers his voice and says, hoping she will understand, "I just really wanna keep the rug, y'know?"

She searches his gaze intently, eyes flitting back and forth between his, then her hand rises from his neck to his cheek, cups it tenderly. "Okay. Let's keep the rug."

He half-smirks. "You hate it."

"Oh, no, I absolutely _do_ hate it," she confirms, "but if it's important to you, we'll keep it. I don't really care _that_ much."

"Liar."

"Yes. That's simultaneously my best and worst quality." She plants a firm kiss onto his awaiting mouth, and he doesn't know how she does it, but his insides exhale a sigh of relief, turning into mush. She must be some kind of magic, he thinks. "But I'm not a _total_ control freak. Let's keep the rug. It has character." Another kiss, short and sweet. "In fact, it doesn't just have character, it has a whole fucking personality of its own." Yet another kiss to muffle his laughter, her own tickling his lips, before she draws back and her eyes turn pleading. "But _please_ not the curtains."

"All right, not the curtains. I can live with that. The painting?" The corner of her mouth curves up in disgust. "Oh, come _on_. You said you liked it when you first came here."

"Fine," she gives in with a huff, rolls her eyes. " _Fine_. Let's keep the painting too."

"Thank you," he says and means it.

"You don't have to thank me for that. It's your apartment too. I want it to feel like home to you," she says and suddenly, as though it's hitting her for the very first time again, the sun rises right behind her gorgeous eyes, and the breathtaking, almost blinding smile on her features looks just as giddy as he feels, his heart demonstrating an impressive backflip. "I should be thanking _you_ for still wanting this even though I might possibly be a total control freak after all."

"Hmmm…" Toby snakes his arm around her waist, draws her flush against him, embarrassingly distracted by the way her soft lips part to breathe a gasp of surprise at the unexpectedness of his actions. "I'll admit, it does have its benefits…"

She hums as well, dropping her voice and tilting her head to the side like a curious little puppy, and retorts, an air of almost innocence accompanying her words he often wishes wouldn't dance him into surrender every single time, "Like what?"

"Okay, honeymooners," Aria interrupts and though her tone is light, the expression on her face is less than pleased. "Why am I cleaning your kitchen while you're standing there making eyes at each other?"

"AP Giddy with Hormones," Toby deadpans without much thought and as Spencer immediately bursts into barking laughter as if he has just told _the_ joke of the goddamn century, Aria's mouth briefly twinges in half-amusement and she shoots another look at her husband who reciprocates it this time, adding a goofy shrug of his own for good measure.

Unlike before, however, Toby for sure has seen that particular look before; that _oh-those-rowdy-kids_ look blossoming in Emily's well-meant eye-roll whenever he receives a text message from Spencer. The _they-really-don't-know-anything_ look following Hanna's sigh when he had picked up Spencer from Aria's place a little while ago and they kissed like they hadn't seen each other in months. The _can't-wait-until-you-wake-up-again_ look he had gotten from his father last week after (foolishly, if he may add) telling him about his move to Worcester. And yes, even that _oh-to-be-young-again_ look delicately woven into Mrs. Hastings' cheerful tone of voice when he'd answered Spencer's phone while she was taking a shower.

After giving it some (read: none) thought, he quickly decides that he doesn't give a single shit.

What _do_ they know, anyway? They have done this before, he and Spencer, have they not; bought rose-colored glasses to sport around Rosewood, walked through the cotton candy, honeymoon period…then walked through hell and back and their way into an early, easily avoidable demise before crawling out of the world (not at all) unshattered, hand in hand. So what exactly _do_ they know besides what they think to have witnessed over the years; what they think they are allowed to presume? What do they know, really, about the life he and Spencer are slowly shaping besides the fact that they all seem hellbent on commenting it with (resentful) quasi-wisdom, patronizing _oh-those-honeymooners_ glances hidden behind giggles? _We deserve this_ , he thinks defensively, _we deserve this_.

So his stuff ends up in boxes and the boxes end up in his and Spencer's cars both, the rug in the backseat of her car, the little painting placed on top of it, and Ezra says he will drop by the next morning to grab whatever Aria had promised to give away, donate or hide in their storage, and when day finally bleeds into night, he and Spencer are the only ones left. There's so much to do, especially early the following morning, so it's perhaps time to go home – _home_ , he repeats silently, his stomach feeling warm and pleasant – but neither makes any attempts to get up and move. They play cards on the floor where his couch used to be, Spencer's phone blaring an 80s playlist as they pass a bottle of Coke back and forth between them.

"So this is it," she announces after a while, meeting his glance with a triumphant smirk over the pile of cards in the middle. She has won for the third time in a row, the competitive spark inside her pretty eyes so adorable that he doesn't have the heart to tell her that he had intentionally let her win the first two rounds.

"Hm?"

"This is it," Spencer repeats, begins shuffling the cards. "Your last night in this apartment."

"Yeah. I guess so."

"How does it feel?"

He smiles a bit sheepishly, shrug one shoulder. "Good. Exciting. Long overdue, somehow. But mostly very, very exciting," he answers after a beat or so, stifling an exhausted yawn behind his hand. "I heard my new roommate's really beautiful."

"Did you now?" she replies, picking up her hand, and judging by the _tiniest_ twitch of her brows, it's not an especially good one. He mimics her action, picks up his hand as well, barely keeping down his subsequent look of disappointment. "I heard that she's difficult. A fucking disaster."

"Eh. I've found those to be unfounded rumors." Leaning back on his arm slightly, he continues staring at his cards, at a total loss for a winning strategy. He risks a glance at Spencer's helpless expression as she musters her hand just as intently as him. At least it appears as if he isn't alone in his current misery. Averting his eyes, then, he smiles a little, first at Spencer, at himself, and adds on in a mumble, "Personally, I think she's the best thing that's happened to me."

Her eyes immediately shoot up, round and innocent as they meet his blues across Bonnie Tyler slowly fading into George Michael on her phone between them. A timid flush colors her cheeks a soft pink, lips curling into a shy grin, reintroducing that fucking dimple into her features that's almost calling to him. "Well," she finally says, regaining her composure with a deliberate exhale of breath. "I'd like you to keep that in mind before you attempt to kick my ass. Seriously, _what_ are these cards?"

"A woman of many talents… but dealing cards isn't one of them."

"Apparently not," she agrees with a small sigh, shakes her head. Then, after moving several of her cards around, like they are going to look better that way: "Really, though, I'm sorry. About earlier."

He furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "Hm?"

"The whole thing with your stuff?" she clarifies, plays her card. "I'm so sorry. I don't want you to feel like…like a burden. A nuisance. Or like I don't want you there."

"Spence, don't worry about it." He shrugs. " _I'm_ sorry for insisting on that rug. You're right. It's fucking ugly."

"I didn't say it was _ugly_. I just said it was _loud_. Which it is, by the way, but that's not the point." Humming quietly, she regards his move, twisting her puckered lips to the side in a little thinking pose. "It's just that I've been living alone for a _while_ now and I'm very stubborn. Not to mention selfish. So, y'know, voluntarily compromising my _Pinterest_ living room is kind of hard for me."

He has no idea what 'Pinterest living room' is supposed to mean. He briefly contemplates asking her, then decides against it when it occurs to him that she will undoubtedly start snickering.

"It's not a big deal," he assures her instead, shrugging his shoulders again. "I think I just reacted kinda badly because the entire situation…" Trailing off and blowing a raspberry at her following move, he plays his card, scratches at his nose. "I didn't really, uh, I didn't pick a single piece of furniture when we moved to the island. Everything I wanted to keep or buy, Yvonne just mostly negotiated into the study. The attic. I didn't have much…um… I didn't have much say in it?"

Eyes softening further under the slight arch of her eyebrows, Spencer looks at him and chooses her words slowly, wisely. First rolls them into a scrunched-up ball, then begins weighing them inside her palms to check which ones might hurt least (which ones might hurt _less_ than others), which ones might soften the sting (the blow) and yet which ones could still grant her the joyous satisfaction that she is after. It probably isn't something he should be conscious of, but he knows that feeling well. Secondhand anger, disappointment, bitterness, blinding hurt at the man ( _men_?) who had broken her heart (and sometimes at _himself_ for the very same reason, but that's neither here nor there right now). He has many remarks to spare, many remarks to bite back down, only out of pure, unwavering respect to the one person he loves the most and the choices she'd made, the choices that had shaped her into who she is now: one hell of a woman.

And she – his girl, his warrior, his Spencer; _his, his, his_ , his heart whispers, and Toby feels kind of ashamed at the way he doesn't feel ashamed at all for his greed – she is stronger than him in each and every way because as swiftly as her fury had flared up, it vanishes again: red-hot, all-consuming flames of anger now merely a candle of unadulterated dedication, gently flickering inside her browns.

"I don't want to be like that," she says, shakes her head. "I don't want you to _ever_ feel like a, a guest inside your own house."

"And you aren't. 'Like that'." He tries a smile, relieved when she returns it without hesitation (returns that dimple too and—damn it, he can't help it; this time, he leans over to tenderly brush his mouth against it, revels in the soft giggle she gifts him at once). "It's my fault. I overreacted. I wasn't allowed to keep a hideous rug and immediately assumed that it _must_ be personal-"

"See!" she exclaims, successfully interrupting as she lowers her hand with the cards and throws them into the pile in the middle. "This is stupid. We should've moved into a new place."

"Yeah. Right. With our 0 money."

She purses her lips. "I should've moved _here_ then."

"Here?" he echoes, looking around the apartment, eyebrows drawn together. "I don't even own a washer. Or a dyer. Or a bathtub."

"I want you to feel _home_."

"I _am_ home," he says. "When I'm with you, I'm home."

The tranquil smile on her features keeps lingering, complete with a slight tilt of her head, brown eyes sparkling just as bright as before, until it suddenly breaks into a gleeful smirk and she says, because of course she does, "We identified _and_ isolated a potential issue before it could become an _actual_ issue."

"Yeah, look at us," he acknowledges with a sincere, appreciative nod. " _Growth_."

_And we deserve this_ , Toby thinks again, letting her crawl into him wordlessly, her head coming to a rest on his shoulder. _After all the pain and suffering, we deserve this_.

So he moves in and her place is _their_ place, is _home_ , and the dreadful rug ends up in the hallway between the bedroom and the study and it honestly doesn't look as hideous as they had expected. They slip into a routine easily: work and class and the excitement of mundanity, work and class and date nights, work and class and domesticity, and it only dawns on him how much time they had been spending even _before_ when he notes that living together, really, doesn't feel that much different than not.

He moves in in June and they go camping in July, spend most of their night chasing away pesky mosquitos out of their overpriced equipment they had gotten off Amazon last minute ("This has 500 5-star reviews and 391 1-star reviews, how's that even _possible_ ," she wonders, putting it in their shopping cart anyhow). Spencer manages to start a fire – Toby lovingly calls her his little pyromaniac, his unyielding chuckle muffled when she stuffs a marshmallow into his mouth to shut him up – and they make up nonsense horror stories that quickly spiral out of control – she doesn't like the yellow-toothed monster he comes up with; he keeps pointing out the plot holes in her tale about the menacing murderer from the mountain – and they make love by the stream, a feat that is slightly more fun in theory, they quickly find, what with mud, leaves and possibly insects contaminating their every pore. And later, they lie side by side on a damp towel, gazing at the stars, feeling insignificant (but Toby, Toby feels larger than life in her embrace), and she explains the galaxy to him, whispering names and dates and coordinates into his ear, not getting that it's hard to look at anything else when Spencer is right _there_ , her and her childlike features taking in the wonders of the world, her and her precious heart shining bright inside his universe.

(Inside the tent, she scrolls through her phone. They are in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, and she still has enough service to get in some online shopping. And enough energy to reprimand him, too, it seems.

He hums against the back of her neck and presses a sloppy, adoring kiss to her exposed shoulder blade and then slowly, so slowly, because there is absolutely no need to rush anything, is there, he trails his finger up her silky leg, marveling at the softness and warmth of her skin. He strokes over her knee carefully and thinks he _might_ just get away with it without her fully noticing, but, of course, when he begins pulling his finger up her inner thigh, she suddenly slaps his hand off and he has to retreat at once, albeit begrudgingly. He buries his nose in her hair instead. It smells like summer rain.

"And, you know, just for your information," Spencer tells him matter-of-factly as she continues their earlier conversation easily, like there hasn't been a good ten-minute break. He caresses her stomach and she squirms like a worm, pushing off his hand again. "This 'male pride' thing isn't cute. At all."

"If you'd honestly describe me as someone with 'male pride', you don't know me at all," Toby retorts in a low mumble, sinking his teeth into her skin where her neck meets her shoulder. For a few long and wonderful beats, she seems distracted enough, eyebrows deeply furrowed at her phone, and he, feeling daring or stupid or greedy or all of it, inches one of his hands downwards, teasing at her underwear, the only item currently covering the lower half of her body. But she's obviously having none of it tonight and wordlessly takes it back into her own before placing it on the ground next to them.

"Then what is it?"

"Hm?"

"If it's not male pride, then what's the issue? I wanna get you a drafting table and you're acting like I asked you to rob a bank for me."

"For the record, I probably _would_ rob a bank for you if you asked me to." He pauses. "Although I think I'd feel really bad about it and then end up confessing right away."

"That's really sweet," she fake-coos, reaching behind her to blindly pat his cheek. Ever the fool that he is, he peppers her open palm with kisses, immensely pleased with himself when she tilts her head all the way back and laughs. "My underwear stays on until I've found one that I like."

He emits a sigh, drawing his face out of reach before she can swat at him. "I just…I don't feel comfortable with you spending so much money on me all the time."

"I'm not spending money. I'm investing," she clarifies, turning her attention back to her phone.

" _Investing_ ," he echoes blankly.

"Investing," she confirms in a lighthearted voice. "I'm _investing_ so that you can become a great, successful architect and build us a house someday. You know, nothing huge, but I'd personally love a walk-in closet. Oh, with a vanity. Lots of space for shoes. Stuff like that."

"Huh."

"And a pantry would be nice, actually. It should be spacious though so that I can buy those cute containers and organize everything alphabetically."

He has a hard time hiding how giddy he feels so he opts for making his response sound as casual as he can, "What about the bathroom? Think it needs a double vanity?"

" _God_ no," she counters, shakes her head. "Those are useless. But you know what the bathroom needs? A separate shower and bathtub. Clawfoot, preferably."

"Hmm…" he makes, nuzzling her hair again. "Clawfoot. That's expensive."

"Well yeah," she says distractedly. "But you're a successful architect in this fantasy, remember? And in the same fantasy, _I_ have been promoted multiple times. So we can afford it."

He chuckles. "You're right. That makes perfect sense." He bumps his nose against her cheek to make her tilt her head to the side. When she does, he kisses her ear. She smiles once more, wide and beautiful, either at his tone, his lack of patience or the tiny kisses he is now leaving on her gorgeous neck which he is sure must tickle since he hasn't bothered with shaving for days. Her hand finds his hair, running her fingers through it, and his heart is spiraling like a feather in the wind. He asks, quiet and brave and anxious and stupid, "So…just so that I'm absolutely sure-"

"And can plan accordingly on your _new_ drafting table?"

"Yes." He teases her earlobe with his teeth, wondering what use there is to even argue with this woman when she always gets what she wants anyhow; when he will always gladly give her just that. "So we need a bedroom, a study…"

"A huge kitchen."

"A huge kitchen with a lot of counter space. A pantry. A walk-in closet."

"A, uh, a living room…" Her voice breaks, drifts into a pleased sigh, at him sucking her earlobe into his mouth; he can't help the ensuing smirk, the highly entertained snort when she locks her phone and throws it somewhere out of reach. "A little laundry closet… maybe a mudroom…"

"Got it," he whispers. He lets his hand drift lower again. She doesn't stop him. "Anything else?"

"Maybe…maybe a spare bedroom?" She meets his gaze over her shoulder, and he thinks, _silly_. Silly how they had attempted to count all the stars in the sky tonight when all of them had been hiding inside her eyes. "A guestroom? You know. Just in case."

"Just in case."

Her underwear is off before she can finish her order.)

In August, they book shitty Airbnbs and stay in shittier motels, travelling whatever they can of the East Coast on their weekends off with the sole intention of sightseeing, _period_ , though what they end up seeing most of is the ceiling of their temporary bedrooms. Regardless, they _do_ visit the lighthouse in Portland, Maine, taking scenic photos Spencer makes sure to add an abnormal number of filters onto before he is officially allowed to upload them to his Instagram. The next week, at the White Mountains, New Hampshire, they go on a lovely horseback ride that leaves him with sore thighs (among other places, if he has to be honest) and Spencer's eyes brimming over with happiness as she buries her face in the mane of her massive Belgian that she's dubbed a 'horsie' like he isn't the size of a small car. With Aria and Oscar tagging along, they make the short, one-hour drive over to Salem, Massachusetts, where he feels a little overwhelmed by the Wicca-themed souvenirs begging to be bought from every street corner, and then he feels a little weirded out by the Beelzebub postcard Spencer snags ( _after_ scoffing at the idea of superstitions and the supernatural, of course) and that he hopes she will forget once they are back home.

(On Mt. Desert Island, summer is cruel.

Toby is marked by a painful sunburn to his face, earning him the lovely nickname of 'Rudolph' for the remainder of their trip. And then the sweat – sweat that is dripping down his back nonstop even in the shade where he is sat on a rather scratchy beach towel. Aria is spread across hers to his right with her arm over her eyes, AirPods in, tuning out the rest of the world. Her husband's sitting to Toby's left, sipping on a beer that Toby assumes must be lukewarm already, attempting polite small about topics that the younger man, honestly, doesn't find all-too interesting beyond the friendship of convenience they had to enter because of the women in their lives.

Not like he is _listening_ or engaging much anyway. He is grateful for his sunglasses because they mask his true intentions; a little ahead of them, right by the shoreline, Spencer's profile is mostly covered by her gigantic sunhat, her beach dress gently blowing in the occasional breeze, making her look like a starlet among the unimportant faces of strangers willingly revealing themselves to the mercy of the ocean. She is holding up baby Oscar by his tiny hands, his grasp on both of her thumbs so safe and unconditionally trusting that he wonders how she could be blind to how much this little guy _adores_ her. The waves rush back, tickle his feet stomping into the sand. He coos, emits an overjoyed _yell_ , tilting his head back to stare and grin and drool at his godmother like she has just shown him the impossible. Like she has just unmade and made the world before his eyes, shaped it into a place of absolute magic. Toby knows that feeling. In fact, he knows it well.

Then Oscar seems daring. Daring enough, at least, with Spencer holding onto him tight, a silent promise of conviction. She crouches somewhat to his level to encourage him, to tell him to keep trying, to push on, and he moves one chubby leg forward. In his mind, he is a scientist; the first man to walk the moon and climb the skies, probing and exploring this new world she has made for him and him only. This is an experiment; of cause and effect, of trust and love, of knowing where boundaries are. So he moves the other one as well.

"Oh, look at you _go_ , babe," Spencer exclaims happily, immediately laughing when he guffaws, immediately kissing him when he huffs in frustration, so very adamant to travel the entire shore, to travel the _entire world_ if that means that she will be right by his side. Toby knows that feeling too. Knows it better than himself.

He feels himself blush.

He looks away.)

In September, Toby somehow manages to score six consecutive job interviews. One place sticks him into limbo, not even showing some basic courtesy and calling him back to reject him. Then another misspells his name on the forms he has to sign – _Kavanagh, Tobias_ , they state – before a blue-haired girl with a septum piercing taps away on her iPad and leads him to an elevator in the back of the building, sending him to the eighth of twelve floors with a plastered-on grin and a dorky guffaw of, "I'll beam you right up, Scotty!"

The following office is considerably smaller than the last. Fifteen minutes from Spencer's place of work, jammed between a _Starbucks_ and a boutique mostly selling these tiny, overpriced bags that Spencer is so fond of. It's on the third floor, a carpentry firm downstairs, an interior design company downstairs, and it's quite homely, familiar, the décor fairly clean and simple, the office itself awash with light, the employees amicable – but he does have to acknowledge that his bias is heavily influenced by the black Labrador he spots faithfully perched under her owner's desk. "Oh, yeah, we're, _like_ , chill with you bringing, _like_ , your dog to work or whatever?" Ashley (Ashleigh? Ashlee?) answers Toby's wordless inquiry as she swipes between apps on her phone, him trailing behind her, "and we're also, _like_ , really family-oriented and stuff? _Like_ , we have a daycare thing if that's, _like_ , something you're, _like_ , curious about? We can, _like_ , totally check that out later or whatever?"

Toby is pretty certain that he runs the fourth interview into the ground without meaning to, kind of confused by the standardized test awaiting him in the area he is taken to by the stern-looking man in a suit and tie. It's nightmare material. He feels as though as he is taking a very important exam; an exam he had no idea he was supposed to _prepare_ for, various tables strewn across the windowless room, a whiteboard at the front – _Please remain seated after you've finished_ , it says in a mock-cheery tone, the drawn-on smiley next to it giving it a creepy trace – about seventeen other candidate stuck in hell with Toby, all sighing and despairing and scribbling onto the paper with vigor. As though _they_ had indeed been preparing for it and he is the only fool in the whole building. He gives his best, focuses, because of course he does, of course he has to, but it's hard to do just that when confronted with questions such as, ' _Compile an alphabetical list of the first ten words you associate with growth'_ or ' _What are your thoughts on alternate living solutions? Is society heading towards a future where the unique challenges of urban loneliness will finally disappear for good? (1500 words or less)_ '. He is exasperated by the time he makes it to the last page. Two questions, he then realizes with a frown, kind of glancing around nervously to check whether the others have come to the same conclusion, are _identical_ to the ones he had answered on the first page half an eternity ago, only phrased a little differently. Another one consists of a math problem and a logic puzzle so easy he nearly feels as though he is missing _something_ and the last one asks for a drawing of his ideal _Monopoly_ board. Whatever 'ideal' even means.

The fifth interview finishes so quick, Toby accidentally forgets to ask the HR person _any_ of the literal hundreds of questions burning on his mind. The sixth and, fortunately, final one cancels on him the day of; a fake sympathetic yadda-yadda-yadda of "We're sorry to inform you" and "Thank you so much for" that he shrugs his shoulders at, locking his phone and sliding it back into his pocket (and his stupid stomach swoops anyhow, vibrating with none-too-gentle anxiety, rejection still something that stings like fire but he keeps chugging on – he has to).

He hears back from three of them. Three out of six isn't too bad, right? That one place that had looked (and, honestly, _felt_ ) like an Apple Store writes him a couple of days later, congratulating him and asking him when he is available to come in again, though, for some reason or another, they misspell his name once more – _Cavanagh_ , it declares proudly, unaware of his name being right _there_ , in his fucking e-mail address. That other place with the black Labrador (and Ashley-Ashlee-Ashleigh) sends him a _hand-written_ letter, old-fashioned, traditional, _familiar_ , tells him to give them a phone call ASAP. To his biggest surprise, the claustrophobic place he is all but convinced is actually a secret government laboratory trying to acquire new subjects for their human experiments writes him as well, one of the signatures at the bottom of the letter harboring the same smiley face from the whiteboard – "Oh god, that's fucking creepy," Spencer remarks, whipping the paper from his grasp and reading over the contents greedily, "You should do it."

He _should_ be making a decision, and he should be making one pretty soon, he supposes, but all that he decides on for now is leaving that to a future version of himself. So they go out instead, Spencer and him, and sit bored at some bar they have never been to, sipping their drinks, acting like tourists from Europe for no reason whatsoever once they are tipsy ( _drunk_ ) enough, talking in inflated, plastered-on accents and snickering at jokes that aren't really all that funny. Spencer says she has never been to a real concert; she confesses to him during one of their usual morning runs like it's a shameful secret she had never wanted him to find out, and he promptly makes it his life's mission to take her to one because what is he supposed to do? A Rock concert, it ends up being. _That_ type of loud, angry and politically charged music a much, much younger version of him would have listened to while lying in bed and staring holes into the carpet. Once they're there, chewed up and swallowed by the massive crowd moving as one, she expertly climbs onto his shoulders, her drink overflowing and spilling onto his sweaty back whenever she mindlessly sways along to the drums, and he steadies her with a grip on her thighs, lungs filled with smoke from her cigarette, stomach filled with alcohol and cotton-candy. At the end of the night, they're giddy with post-music excitement, buy matching shirts that they will (likely) never wear again and make out like teenagers on the train on their way back home, her mouth tasting of beer and cherries.

(And yet, even nestled deep inside their freshly woven cocoon of bliss, life isn't always a pretty, melodic song, and in the late-summer days fading into fall, buried pain takes her slowly, rocks her through it, sings her into a fretful sleep, a pitiful, little blackout. It's slow, the first symptoms hitting: she starts eating less, then talking less, eventually sleeping less, and Toby fucking hates himself for not properly catching on until he finds her bawling her eyes out in the kitchen in the middle of the night, her only answer to his question a half-desperate yell of, "I don't _know_."

They cope in the strangest ways, the both of them: a terrible twosome. Toby, he is still her mirror image, isn't he, so when Spencer deals by drinking light, they are mostly soaring through their shared heartache. Two teeny, tiny birds, fragile wings spread for takeoff, on a mission to _forget_ , her tunic hanging off her collarbone like waterfalls, his eyes drowning inside it. Somewhere in Vermont, miles and miles away from home on another impulsive road trip, they hunker down on the cement curb between the stalls at some fair they had stumbled upon, sneaking mouthfuls of cheap booze from the flask she has been hiding inside her bra. They take gulps until they are decently buzzed. That very special type of drunk _just_ before sickness comes over and introduces itself. Where everything feels hilarious and beautiful and comfortably numb. Red-cheeked and snickering at their own audacity, they stumble off the ground, and the night-sky is darkening as they clumsily run past curious fair goers, making their way to one of the open gondolas of the Ferris wheel. There, they wait impatiently to be barred in, giggling like _fools_ in love, violently rocking the bench back and forth, more than likely disturbing all the other passengers until they are safely buckled in at last. They ride the Ferris wheel all the way to the top, looking out upon the night in awe, sparkling stars and sparkling stalls, and, really, there isn't any time for sadness or tears when they feel like they own the whole fucking world.

When she decides to cope by drinking too heavy, he is by her side, and time feels far away. Her heels are dangerously click-clacking on the sidewalk as they somehow walk to the apartment and inside the darkness of their home, shedding layers of clothing and shrugging them into an ungraceful pile by her feet, she tells him about the ways she wishes him to take her apart. She slurs words, commands, pleas he knows he won't be proud to repeat in the light of his massive hangover morning; says she wants him to tear out her insides like flimsy cotton, rip out her stuffing until there is nothing left that makes her Spencer, and once they have stumbled into bed, heavy breaths mingling and minds swirling as one, they don't make love, they _fuck_ like they are trying to scratch out their memories from existence. He feels shame once it passes, sunlight tickling his nose, his head pounding along to the rhythm of his regrets; wears the storm-colored, little bruise her teeth have left on his neck like a goddamn trophy regardless, something inside him sighing in relief once he hears her happy whistle from the kitchen, the clatter of pots and pans accompanied by the sizzling of oil, the smell of bacon, the promise that he did well, the promise that today might be better.

But when she chooses to drink too much, it's the worst, and even Toby can't deny that—Spencer is chain-smoking in Montreal on a windy night, sat on a wooden stool, drenched in cheap liquor, too drunk to give a single damn about the bartender telling them to quit it. Her eyes, they break him kind of, sort, of, definitely; framed by blue crescents, they are hauntingly empty. Shut down and gone somewhere deep, deep inside herself where no one can hurt her. They are stuck in this weird interdependence, the both of them, a terrible twosome indeed, his stomach splashing with just as many drinks, his throat sore from the cigarette drags he had unceremoniously taken from her, and Toby still has half a mind to note that they can't keep going like this. Half a mind, when he blinks and the bitter fatigue radiating off her reminds him of his mom for a second too long, to realize that he should be going straight to hell for encouraging rather than stopping her. Back at the motel, she throws up, crying, then cries, throwing up, and he carries her over to their bed like a bride, setting her down mechanically, fixing her shirt like that will help. He crawls under the blanket with her, hugs her shuddering frame, too drunk and fucking useless to come up with anything other than gentle cooing. He watches her succumb to sleep a while later, the confused frown disappearing from her features, her face looking peaceful for the first time in _hours_ , and this time, his stomach, it turns over in anxiety, as though it's slowly realizing that it's safe to do just that, now that he doesn't have to look out for her any longer. It's full of booze still, making him wish he had vomited as well, and his blood is full of worry, love, worry, love, both of them starting to feel the same. And he thinks, staring at her chest rising and sinking with her unsteady breathing, thinks, _the human body isn't built to handle so much pain at once_. And he thinks, as he presses his mouth to her temple tenderly, sighing into her hair, _we can't go on like this forever, Spencer_. And he thinks, his arms tightening around her, half-scared to death that she will maybe slip from his grasp one day, _I'm so sorry, Mom_.

He signs his contract and suddenly, Halloween is inching closer and by the time Stephanie from the third floor has decorated her railings with tiny, little spiders and bats, it hits him that Spencer has been on a sick leave for two weeks now. She is wasting away at home, he knows she is, her days as empty as the look behind her eyes, shuffling about the place in her slippers on a never-ending voyage to the kitchen and back, her favorite sweatshirt of his, a gray Boston University one, loosely hugging itself to her body. During those miserable days, his mother is on his mind a lot, especially when he comes home to her curled up form on the couch, watching reruns of _I Love Lucy_ or _Bewitched_ , and she usually looks up at him then, like she is able to tell, like she is thinking too, thinking about telling him something along the lines of, _see, didn't I_ tell _you this would happen eventually_ , but his Spencer, she is a fighter. And fight on she does, every fucking day. Her therapist shows mercy, puts her on a new medication plan: different pills, different dosage, the come-down from her old antidepressants and the unexpected, full-force side effects of the new ones making her more irritable than before. Gradually, he watches the colors of spring return to her face, however, a glow sparkling in her eyes, a softer pink calling her cheeks their new home, just as the trees outside are losing theirs, but the pills don't do much about the nights.

" _Breathe_ ," he is telling her one chilly evening, several weeks later, holding her hands inside his as she is sat up against the headboard. "Come on, baby, breathe. Breathe with me."

"I _can't_ —"

"Yes, you can. _Breathe_."

It's a panic attack. He hasn't witnessed her have one since college, hyperventilating at her phone after a 'prank' by one of her classmates. On her best days, she is the queen of her own kingdom, running around like she owns the ground she is walking on, blessing it with her presence, always a little smile playing at her mouth, ready to come out whenever, a lightness inside her steps, her type-A attitude engraved into the way she proudly carries herself. On her worst days, she's stuck picking up the shattered pieces of herself, conditioned to _fix_ things even when it's too late. But in here and right now, she is this frail girl, clutching at him to keep herself from slipping, from falling, from sinking, a sheen of sweat covering her forehead, her knuckles white. He talks her through it, surprised at how easily he had remembered what to do, until her rapid breathing evens out, returns to normal. Until she falls against his chest, too exhausted to cry. Toby wishes that he could.

"I'm sorry," she whispers into the quiet of the room, closing her eyes in shame. "I'm sorry. I'm _so_ sorry. I don't know what that was."

_A warning_ , he wants to say as his hand strokes over her arm, attempts to warm her skin. _Because we have to fucking stop_.

"It was a panic attack, Spence," he tells her softly instead, embracing her tightly like a dam with her kitten. "I didn't know you were having them again. Do you wanna talk about it?"

"No," she responds. Her voice is carrying a very end-of-the-discussion tone to it and he is half-ready to let it go for now, hold her until she feels well enough to fall back asleep into a state of numbness where her dreams are pleasant, safe. Then she says, eerily calm and icy, "What I want to do is spit on Charlotte's grave."

Well, it's better than getting drunk, he supposes.

It's deep in the am when they climb into his car to drive over to Rosewood, but they don't even make it there. Instead, somewhere between Middletown and Stanford, if he had to take a guess, Spencer says that she is starving. He knows that she hasn't been eating much and he decides he will gladly take whatever opportunity he can get to persuade some food into her. So they stop at a road-side diner, and she eats eggs and toast and fiddles nervously with her mug of coffee, seemingly becoming aware of her outfit choice – his coat too big for her, merely thrown over her pajamas, her pants mostly swallowed by big, brown boots, though it's not like he looks much better, to be honest – and they share a huge milkshake, Toby blowing a myriad of bubbles into it with his colorful straw in order to at least entice a tiny chuckle out of her. He feels pleased with himself when his attempt proves successful.

Head propped up on her elbow and worrying the milkshake straw between her teeth, Spencer's aimlessly drawing shapes on her placemat when Toby returns to their little corner booth after a trip to the jukebox, The Temptations' _My Girl_ now echoing across the diner. He catches the two waitresses behind the bar exchange an amused look though neither says anything, the fair-haired one merely filling up the empty cup of the man in front of her with more coffee.

"We should turn around," she tells him, gifting him the prettiest of smiles at his stupid humming along to the song – _Well,_ _I guess you'd say, what can make me feel this way? My girl, my girl, my girl._ Her foot nudges him under the table. "No, honestly. We should drive back home. I have no idea what I was thinking."

"But I was looking forward to some serious grave desecration."

She prods her spare pencil in his direction, and he picks it up, starts scribbling nonsense on her placemat as well. "You're supposed to be the rational one in this relationship and not go along with any reckless idea I come up with."

"You're very convincing."

_I don't need no money, fortune or fame, I've got all the riches, baby, one man can claim…_

"Besides, it just sounded slightly less…" He struggles with his choice of words, draws a curious butterfly landing on the trunk of the baby elephant she has sketched napping under a palm tree. He says, "It seemed less self-destructive than getting drunk with you in shady, Canadian bars."

"Probably," she agrees, adding another butterfly next to his. He draws a heart around them. She giggles. "Although I don't know if I'd be able to look Ali in the eye if I went through with it."

_I've got sunshine on a cloudy day with my girl…_

He shrugs nonchalantly. "We all do things we aren't exactly proud of sometimes."

Making an exasperated noise in the back of her throat, she brusquely shoves his hand out of the way so she can add terrifying teeth to the little, innocent Dalmatian he is working on. He shoots her a look that she expertly dodges. "You realize it's always gonna be this way, right?" A mean set of horns. He counters with a set of pups. "I don't know when or _if_ I'll ever break this… this cycle."

_My girl, my girl, my girl_ …

"Well, no problems at this end," he replies then because it feels like the right thing to say, giving another casual shrug to emphasize his words. She reacts the way he had hoped she would, corner of her mouth quirking up. "But I do think navigating the East Coast is gonna be kinda difficult once we're, like, really old and stuff…"

"Really old?" she repeats.

"Yeah? I mean, you _do_ realize we're stuck with each other, right?" he retorts, echoing or maybe mocking her tone from earlier, earning him another nudge of her foot. "And, y'know, that means the whole package. Gray hair, bad eyesight, dislocated hips, awful sense of hearing…"

"Wrinkles?"

"Of course. Lots of them." He nods against her snort of amusement. "But sure, be my guest, we can totally go to concerts with our walker and cane. What's the worst that could happen?"

_My girl, my girl, my girl_ …

She snorts again, intertwines their fingers across their drawing. "There's nothing I'd rather do."

He lifts their joined hands to his mouth, presses a lingering kiss to hers. "Me neither."

The jukebox switches to Etta James' _At Last_ , the trucker greedily slurping his fifth cup of coffee with gusto, the cook peeking out from behind the closed kitchen door, a cigarette dangling from his lips… before him, Spencer leans across the table, kissing him in gratitude, and somewhere, from the corner of his eye, he catches the waitresses exchange another moony look.

But he doesn't give a shit.)

"Okay, hang on. Okay, okay, careful now…mind your head…" Toby instructs her in December, cautiously helping her navigate her way out of the car. "And please keep your eyes closed."

"I'm _blindfolded_ , Toby," Spencer reminds him, half-amused, half-annoyed, tightly gripping his arms as they stomp through the glistening snow that is coming up to her calves. "Even if I didn't 'keep them closed', how much would I be able to see, anyway? Like, realistically?"

He guides her away from the car, at last wrapping his arm around her waist to steady her, taking her hand immediately reaching out for him into his. "It's not much farther."

"Yeah, well, easy for _you_ to say. I've been blindfolded for the past thirty minutes and I'm really starting to get nauseous." He smiles at her purposely dramatic undertone, glancing at the snow-covered ground to spot any potential slip hazards. He can virtually _see_ her ears perk up curiously as she lifts her head towards the sky in an attempt to figure out where they are. When she, after a good ten or so seconds of analyzing, seemingly comes up with nothing, she purses her lips in irritation and says, "Seriously, you could at least give me a _hint_. Are you pregnant? Is that why you've been kind of off lately?"

" _Ha, ha_."

"No, really, you can tell me. I think it's my right to know."

He pokes her waist, obviously taking her by surprise because she jumps, blindly shoving at the air where she suspects him to be. "Have you ever heard of the word 'patience'?"

"Once or twice." Suddenly, she furrows her brows in concentration and lifts her head again, a snowflake or two getting caught in her hair that Toby brushes off. She looks giddy. "Are we… are we at the airport? I _think_ I heard a plane."

"We're not at the airport."

"We're at the airport!" she exclaims excitedly. She extends her hand to grab his cheek, if he had to take a guess, but ends up patting his whole face. He kisses her palm. "I figured it out!"

Carefully, he maneuvers her past a branch across the grass, then affectionately pushes her hand back down from his face so he can take it back into his. "We're not at the airport."

"So where are we?"

"Don't you trust me?"

"With my life," she assures him, not missing a beat. "But that doesn't mean I—wait, where are you going? Okay, that's it, I'm taking this stupid thing off."

" _No_ ," he pleads. "Just wait there for a second. Please."

"I feel vulnerable."

"I'm right here. I promise."

Heaving a sigh, the cold winter air turning her breath visible for a short beat, Spencer turns her head towards the direction of his voice, crossing her arms across her chest in defiance. "You're awfully lucky that I love you as much as I do."

He can't help but smile at her, her and her dark hair gradually disappearing under a veil of fresh snow, her and her pursed lips so deliciously pink and begging to be kissed, her and her ruthless infuriation scrunching up her face into a displeased glower. She is breathtaking, but when is she not?

"I know," Toby admits easily, feeling warm in the shadow of the smile immediately taking over her face. He clears his throat, then, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, patiently waiting for nervousness to kick in after abandoning him for most of the day but…nothing. Still. It's strange. There he is, his heart willingly wrapped up like a present and put on a silver platter for her to pick and prod at if she wishes to, and all he feels is excitement. "Okay. You can take it off now, if you want to."

"'If I want to'. Like there's any chance I'll keep this on longer than I have to," Spencer mumbles before brusquely pulling down rather than untying the blindfold. Evidently confused, she draws her brows together and blinks once or twice to adjust her eyes until her befuddled gaze, at last, finds Toby standing in the middle of the lot, likely appearing a _little_ out of place. "Oh. All right. It's a…shack. That's a weird choice for a surprise but I'll take it. Thank you…?"

Turning slightly, he follows her eyes. _Right_. He had forgotten about the shack in the back of the plot.

"Happy belated anniversary?" he attempts, hoping she will somehow put two and two together like she usually does. "Or, heh, I mean, could be an early Christmas present too…"

The look of complete and utter confusion remains plastered over her face as she begins stepping closer to him, kicking at the snow with her boots like she is wading through water. "I'm sorry, I don't get—" Something makes her pause as she tilts her head at him accusingly. "Oh, hang on a second. I _know_ this place. It's maybe ten minutes from the apartment. Did you drive in circles so that I wouldn't figure out where we're going?"

"Hm…maybe." He doesn't feel as guilty as she is expecting him to, at least judging by her glare mustering him intently, complete with a raised eyebrow and all. When she eventually moves to stand before him, her hands automatically find their way into his coat pockets as well. He blows some snow off her hair and asks, "So what do you think?"

"Of what?" For the smartest person he has ever met, she is kinda slow sometimes. "The shack?"

" _Our house_ ," he corrects her matter-of-factly, simply grabbing her by the shoulders and turning her around so that her back is pressed against his chest, ignoring the mewl of protest, of ongoing confusion that she emits. "I mean, it's nothing huge or overly fancy…but, see, that's our porch over there? And it's gonna have a mudroom. Then the living room, of course, and a huge kitchen with a lot of counter space. And we can't forget the pantry so that you can fill it with those 'cute containers' and 'organize everything alphabetically'…"

Oh, and it _has_ taken her longer than he had anticipated (hoped), but that's when it finally, _finally_ clicks; Spencer whips her head around and gapes at him, her eyes big and welling up with tears (and what pretty mirror images they make because his, they follow suit, like they can't bear the thought of hers weeping alone), her quivering lips parting into a wordless 'O' of surprise but he merely nuzzles her nose with his and whispers, "No, you have to keep looking. I haven't shown you the laundry closet yet. It's tiny but I think we'll manage. And the master bedroom…I mean, I don't wanna brag, but wait 'til you've seen the walk-in closet. It has a vanity and _lots_ of space for shoes."

"You're holding me, right? 'Cuz I'm pretty sure I'm gonna pass out if you don't."

He wraps his arms securely around her middle, rests his chin on her shoulder. "Always."

"Are we—did you—" She sniffs, giving a teary laugh. "I'm…I don't even know what to _say_."

"As a warning…I did get a little ahead of myself, so I guess your constant impatience is starting to rub off on me," he murmurs, speaking into her sweet-smelling curls. "It's _technically_ not ours yet, but I made an offer and I'm actually pretty confident about it." He brushes his mouth to the back of her neck, leaves a lingering kiss there. "If you're in, I mean. It doesn't have to be here."

"Oh, I'm in. Of course I'm in. I'm…" She sniffles again. "God, we're gonna have _less_ than zero money after this, aren't we?"

A frown of concentration etched between her dark brows, Spencer keeps staring ahead, perhaps letting the vague blueprint of their ( _forever?_ ) home he has painted for her with words take shape and come to life before her inner eye, and he proceeds to do the same as he simply gazes at their reading corner by the gracious fireplace where he can, incredibly vividly too, picture the rocking chair atop a colorful rug, the overflowing bookcases here and there, full to the brim with fantasy books among specialized literature among crime novels and late 19th century classics, several potted plants strewn across to complete the picture of warm comfort…a bit to the right, he can see the kitchen when he lets his eyes wander there, expensive countertops, all these fresh herbs she is so fond of sitting on the huge wooden table with matching twin benches, and ever-late Saturday nights spent there cooking and laughing and talking boring topics with co-workers and friends…in the living room, there is a spacious sofa, ideal for rainy weekends that are best dealt with huddled under his hand-me-down quilt, and in his imagination, there is a tiny, chubby cat balancing on the back of the sofa, impatiently squeezing herself between them, because it's _his_ fantasy so he is allowed to indulge a little, dammit (and in his fantasy, he can make out some excited babbling too, and extraordinarily tiny, precious feet running along the hallway a couple of years and then some down the line, two sets of bigger feet running after them with exhausted laughter of their own, but that is a fantasy he won't allow himself to indulge in… _much_ , that is).

"Well," he answers her inquiry, forces himself to a guilty grimace because he doesn't feel much guilt at all. "Is there a better way to start adulthood than entering your thirties with a crippling amount of debt?"

"Not thirty. Not thirty for a _long_ time."

Approximately three years but who's counting?

"It's going to take some time too," he tells her as she slowly unwraps herself from his embrace with one last squeeze to his arm. She goes onto inspect the ground, then stomps multiple shapes into the snow—a broad outline, he notes, his stomach feeling warm, though he doesn't have the heart to let her know just yet that her outline isn't exactly feasible the way she wants it to. "A lot of paperwork. A lot of sweat. Probably even a lot of fighting over unimportant details."

"Our relationship has survived multiple trips to IKEA, how bad can it possibly be?"

He laughs. "I'm serious."

"So am I," she counters. "We can be like one of those HGTV couples. Take on this _whole_ project together. I can be the brain behind the muscle."

"Thank you for implying that I couldn't possibly be 'the brains'."

"I'm not. What I'm implying is that there's no way _I_ could ever be the muscle."

Chuckling, he shoves his hands back into his pockets, pulling up his shoulders to create at least an illusion of warmth. "I've suggested working out together, y'know."

"No thanks. Watching you is _way_ more fun." Her eyes light up, mischievously twinkling at him from afar. "Preferably while _Whatta Man_ is playing in the background but I'm not picky."

Spencer shakes some snow out of her hair (to no avail), wrapping her scarf around her neck and chin more tightly as she kicks at the frozen, defenseless grass with her boot, and there it is, their living room, her uneven footprints cutting across it already disappearing under fresh snow, and if he focuses a bit more (gets lost _just_ a bit more), he can all but picture her gather her stuff in an endless hurry before leaving for work on a lazy morning like this one. She moves precisely, cautiously, left, right, straight ahead, first builds their kitchen and a bathroom, a light-flooded office overlooking the (for now sort of messy and rather dull) backyard, then seemingly changes her mind and adds a hallway with the stairs leading to the bedroom( _s?_ ) where she is at last forced to end her project, frustrated at Mother Nature remaining so unbothered, unaffected by it all and simply taking back what is rightfully hers, shapes and lines and all of her carefully constructed rooms filling up with winter.

Unable to conquer his boyish grin at her pout that looks more like a mask of exasperation, Toby joins her by the stairs; joins her under the archway leading to their living room; joins her under the gorgeous antique lights she will undoubtedly find at one of the flea markets she enjoys going to with Aria; joins her under their photo wall proudly showcasing their spontaneous adventures and impulsive road trips and numerous vacations spent building sandcastles in the sun and silly photobooth pictures taken on nights drunk on too much wine and too much love. Amid the harsh winter turning her cheeks rosy and her lips blue and the bare bones of their house, time becomes this finnicky, little thing; it's trickling by, slipping from his numb fingers, changing course, and he can feel blurry shadows of their future walk up and down the stairs, pass by and pass through different stages of life, cycle through birthdays and anniversaries and Christmases, gifting him with a taste of what is yet to come, and he inevitably remembers their past versions too, lost on the road between Rosewood and _here_ , and he almost pities them then. Because, fools that they are, they do not know what is awaiting them, what is _just_ sitting around the corner. And they do not know peace, _won't_ know peace until this very moment, with the shy light of the sun getting caught in her eyelashes, and her sweet face taking his in hungrily, and her hands grasping at his, and the snow sparkling like a billion stars on the Ferris wheel in Vermont.

"I'm so excited," she mumbles, her shaky exhale visible against his chin, and he bends slightly so that he can rest his forehead to hers, breathe in her words, "for the rest of my life with you."

"Would you look at that," he comments mock-seriously, pointing at the sky (up at their ceiling, the entire house smelling of cinnamon and pine and mulled cider). "Mistletoe. Wonder who put that there."

Not missing a beat, she plays along seamlessly, emits a gasp of surprise as her arms coil around his neck like by instinct. "Wow. You know what _that_ means."

So he kisses her because suddenly, a world where he isn't tasting from her lips at this moment seems so awfully bleak. He kisses her, hidden away inside the skeleton of their home, and thinks that maybe…maybe some future version of them is kissing in the same spot right now, laughing into each kiss and whispering sweet nothings and sweeter promises in-between. Thinks _maybe_ , maybe some future version of them is getting ready for Christmas, putting up cheap secondhand decoration that all of their neighbors will gossip about. And maybe, he adds, maybe some future version of them is sitting on the porch instead, drinking coffee that burns his tongue and waiting for the sunrise as the smoke of her cigarette gets into his eyes. And perhaps some other version is still in bed, one intertwined mess of limbs, the sheets pulled up to their noses, half-awake and half-not, and he is carrying her heart and she is carrying his…and maybe she's carrying his ring on her finger too, and he is carrying her ring on his, and when he nibbles on her neck, effortlessly pushing into her, the sunlight from the window gets caught on the stone in hers like it had gotten caught in her dark lashes, and perhaps he will remember it then, the day he bought her here; the first day of the rest of their lives.

* * *

("Well, not to rain on your parade," is the first thing Melissa declares when her smug face makes an appearance on the younger woman's laptop screen. Behind her older sister's _vieux riche_ form sat cross-legged on her designer sofa – with uselessly expensive jewelry dangling from her ears and her dark hair recently dyed in order to conceal the gray Spencer just _knows_ gives her painful headaches on a regular basis – Spencer can make out glimpses of her new place. Wherever the hell it is. Might as well _be_ hell. Their mother had been over the fucking moon, Spencer recalls, sending her youngest an excited e-mail – _yes_ , an actual _e-mail_ , not a text or anything – about it though Spencer suspects that her enthusiasm had been partly influenced by Melissa moving out of Wren's neighborhood. Though right now she has trouble remembering why her and her mom had decided that was a bad thing. They fit together like puzzle pieces, after all. Like rotten meat and a handful of maggots. A perfect match made by the gods or possibly under the influence of hormones mistaking lust for love. Same thing.

She is also having immense trouble remembering why she had willingly agreed to a group video chat with her family like they are one of those _boringly_ normal 80s sitcom families, specifically when Melissa adds, "But it doesn't look like much, does it?"

"Thank you for your warm words of encouragement. I knew I could count on your sisterly love and support," Spencer replies dryly as she puts out her cigarette. " _Of course_ it doesn't look like much, Melissa. It's an empty lot."

"I'm just saying-"

"Girls?" Fortunately, Spencer doesn't get to find out what her sister 'is just saying' – their mom has finally managed to enter the conversation as well though the screen is mostly focused on an unflattering close-up of her face. "Girls, is it working? Can you hear me now?"

"Step away from-"

"You're way too close to the camera-"

After a bit of shuffling around, their mother beams at the camera from the island in the Hastings kitchen, wearing the headphones Spencer had gotten her a couple of months ago. "Oh, Spencer, I can barely see you, honey."

" _Mom_ ," Melissa huffs, rolling her eyes. "Stop getting so close to the camera."

"Hi Mom!" Spencer puts in instead as she shoves her pack of cigarettes out of frame, suddenly very comfortable in her freshly assigned role as the golden child. "Where's Dad?"

"That's what I was wondering too. I called him earlier to remind him that we'd-"

Melissa interrupts her, her voice slipping into a girlish octave in an over-the-top reaction to the notification she has caught before the other two women could. "Daddy?"

Like on cue, their father arrives to the scene, late to the party as usual, the already blurry image promptly freezing up due to his poor internet connection and like with their mother, it's mostly his nose and eyes that are visible, all scrunched up in concentration behind his new prescription glasses he wasn't able to escape any longer. Patiently, they wait for him to unfreeze, then accept that they have to carry on without him when his features remain pulled into a mask of confusion.

"Well…" Mom shrugs it off with an eye-roll that _almost_ looks like Melissa but not quite, barely keeping herself from scooting awkwardly close to her phone again to check her daughters and make sure they are the same they have always been. "How are things in Worcester, Spencer? And Pittsburgh?"

"They're good," Spencer responds noncommittally, then changes her mind and says, "Actually, I've been meaning to tell you and Dad-"

She should have expected it, of course; her sister isn't too happy with being a mere afterthought to their mother's question and it shows in her pursed lips, the way she picks at the satin pillows next to her, like a tigress nesting. "They're _great_ , Mom," she cuts in with an exaggerated smirk, the one she always uses when she is basking in Spencer's misery, obviously counting on using the connection issues and their parents' lack of living-in-the-21st-century as an excuse for rudely interrupting her sister yet again. Spencer sighs, internally rolling her eyes. Internally wondering whether it looks like Mom's and Melissa's as well. Then: internally puking.

"I'm really happy at my new job," Melissa goes on.

"…you hear me?" Dad asks before freezing up again. They choose to ignore him.

"I'm glad to hear that, honey," their mother says, fixing her headphones. She has gotten slightly closer again, leaning forward in her seat to intently gaze at her oldest. "Breaking up with that… _him_ and moving away wasn't an easy decision. But you made it and we're _so_ proud of you."

Not to sound like an entitled, spoiled, little _brat_ , Spencer thinks as she somehow overcomes the pressing urge to grimace and stifles it before it can blossom into the mean yet terribly effective smile-and-glare combination a younger version of her would reserve for Mona's eyes only. But _how_ is her older sister _still_ getting pats on the back for barely holding her life together and doing perfectly reasonable adult stuff such as 'not letting your boyfriend cheat on you repeatedly' and 'having a job and paying your own bills while you're getting close to 40 every single day'? She doesn't remember having a goddamn party thrown for her when she had decided that hookups might not be her cup of tea and had possibly been a form of self-sabotage or _self-harm_ after all.

Then again, she doesn't remember telling her mother about doing such in the first place.

She glances at her cigarettes. Shoves at her ashtray with her foot to resist the temptation.

"…think this program is broken," Dad mutters.

"Speaking of making decisions and being desperate for your parents' approval," Spencer states and blows a strand of hair out of her eyes. "As I said earlier, I've been meaning to tell you and-"

"I think you're being too hard on him," Melissa comments as she is innocently playing with her necklace. "We've both made a lot of mistakes in our relationship."

For a fleeting moment or two, Spencer _actually_ considers—a lot of things too, like, if what she's thinking about saying is something that needs to be said and heard, or whether she should force herself through one of these rather weird breathing techniques that Aria had recommended her, where the voice of the unreasonably overpriced app would tell her to _inhale prosperity, exhale negative thoughts_ and _inhale positivity, exhale insecurity_. Then she decides that Melissa is most likely the way she is because no one had ever shown her mercy and given her a much-needed wake-up call and really, what kind of sister would she be if she didn't take on that long overdue task?

"Really? You've _both_ made mistakes in your relationship?" she exclaims, feeling her eyebrows curve up. "I didn't realize that _you_ were the one who stuck your dick in-"

"Spencer!"

" _Spencer_." That stern splutter comes from their father. Always around when nobody needs his two-faced input. His dissatisfied features freeze up once more a beat later, however, stuck in another highly unappealing angle and thus sparing the three Hastings women from hearing the rest of his sentence.

"It's okay, Mom," Melissa is swift to reassure their mother in an all but cat-like purr and Spencer feels her heart sink when she catches her sister's hand sink to come to a rest on her flat stomach. _Oh no_. "I don't expect any of you to understand what Wren and I mean to each other."

"Sweetheart…" Mom begins softly, eyes momentarily dropping towards Spencer's frame as the youngest woman starts massaging the bridge of her nose, exasperated. "Sweetheart," Mom says again, obviously at a loss for words. "Wren is…Wren is like…" She breaks off, then appears to come to the same conclusion Spencer had earlier, and just cuts right to the chase, thankfully not having forgotten that the House of Hastings isn't exactly known for its sense of tact or parental support systems, "Honey, Wren is like herpes. I understand that getting rid of him is painful and hard but in any relationship, there comes a point where it's just not worth fixing anymore."

Melissa furrows her eyebrows. "Dad had a kid with another woman."

"And I would've never forgiven him if he had told me when it happened," their mother responds somberly, shaking her head. Spencer palms her mouth over the soundless chorus of _oh-fuck-no_ inside her head playing like a thousand offbeat pianos. "I would've _never_ taken him back if we didn't already have a family and two kids of our own relying on us and our marriage."

"Mom," Melissa says in a gentle voice and Spencer pictures her sister's finger hovering between a button labeled ' _crocodile tears_ ' and ' _appeal to Daddy's diabetic heart_ ' before settling on ' _I'm an adult and I'm mature enough to make my own decisions and you can't tell me otherwise ('til I come crawling back to Rosewood again)_ '. "We're back together, okay? He's moving here and thinking about opening his own practice-"

"Oh, you can't be serious-"

"I _am_ ," Melissa counters angrily. "I thought you wanted me to be happy."

"Not with _him_."

"Well, Wren is what _makes_ me happy. We sat down and talked it through and Pittsburgh is going to be a fresh start for us. It'll be different this time." Rotten meat and maggots instead. "Spencer and Toby are buying a house after half a week of dating and I'm the one who-"

"You're _what_?"

"No," Spencer deflects and shakes her head energetically. "Uh-uh. We're not ganging up on me now. Not happening. I've been _trying_ to tell you but she's _constantly_ interrupting me." She sits up in her seat, offended, and continues, "And it's not 'half a week of dating', thanks a lot."

Their mother exhales a sigh. "You girls are going to send me into an early grave."

"What did _I_ do?" Spencer exclaims, drawing her eyebrows together. " _We're_ building a house. _She's_ on her way to becoming a glorified trophy wife of a serial cheater."

"You're _awfully_ holier-than-thou about adultery when you're the one who could make a career out of being the other woman," Melissa barks, eyes glistening with ire. "I mean, don't you think it's strange, _Mom_ , that Toby was _engaged_ and now they're back together all of the sudden?"

Spencer gapes at her but before her brain can struggle to keep up with her sister's, their mother cuts in with a sharp, " _Enough_. Both of you."

"Wha-"

"I said _enough_ , Spencer."

Well. Nobody said that the role of the golden child would be a permanent gig.

"I'm sorry," Melissa finally proclaims with a pitiful sigh although her eyes and that maddening smirk don't make her look very sorry at all. "I guess I'm a little hormonal, Spence. I didn't want to insinuate anything."

" _Hormonal_ ," Mom echoes thoughtfully, a little slow, a little cautious, as though she has to first weigh the word inside her mouth, figure out the taste before she is able to grasp its true meaning. And when she does, it's not quite the big party celebrating Wren's ancestry line not dying out with him Melissa had evidently been hoping for that breezes through the chat.

Dead silence is what follows; Spencer opting for covering her mouth again to keep herself from making the situation worse; their mom merely blinking at the camera like something inside her just completely broke down at the news, rendering her unable to function; Melissa producing a hopeful smile out of nowhere, perceptive enough to read the room, never compassionate enough to react like a human being.

"Veronica, how did you get this _stupid_ thing to work?" their father huffs, now holding his phone far away from him. "I can see all of you, but I can't hear a thing. I think you froze. Hello?")

Everybody thinks that they are moving too fast. Funnily enough, nobody has the guts to actually say it. Either out of horrible politeness or a vague sense of respect that they really think managed to trick Spencer into not being able to tell. But she can; quite easily too. They think that they're jumping the gun, with the move, the house, the talks of a future none of them seems to put much faith in. In their minds, she remains the impulsive one. Even after the news of Melissa's recent failings at love and life reach the rest of the family with a rumble and hit her friends' newsfeeds (why they are even _following_ her sister is beyond her but that's a topic for another time). Some part of her is disgruntled at her own _mother_ agreeing; her tone of voice is purposely kept neutral and warm when she shows her pictures of the lot, and yet holding undertones she seems to think Spencer is too stupid to catch (like, ' _Honey, you were supposed to be the_ smart _one'_ or perhaps, ' _Sweetheart, please don't be your sister'_ ).

Everyone thinks they are moving too fast. Spencer feels like they aren't fast _enough_.

Inside the car carelessly pulled to the side of the road – facing the rotting ' _You are now entering Rosewood'_ sign cheerfully welcoming unsuspecting strangers to their doom – they are crammed together in the backseat. It's unsurprising, almost _calculated_ how they got here: she had not-so-casually joked (or: repeated the joke she made sure to prepare in Worcester) about the placement of the sign, including one or two comparisons to Dante's gate of hell that inevitably spiraled in one-upping each other by quoting _The Divine Comedy_ which, in turn and likely fueled by their admittedly weird definition of foreplay, had eventually found a crescendo in her, half-naked on her back, staring up at him, half-naked between her legs, nudging apart her thighs with gusto.

It's not her favorite position on any ordinary day and it's certainly not her favorite position in a hideously freezing, stuffed SUV so she pushes herself up on her elbows to push _him_ against the seat, skillfully mounting his lap.

Of course she hits her head.

" _Ow_ ," she mumbles, and with his lips attached to her exposed chest as if intent not to leave one inch of her un-kissed, he sighs a muffled apology into her skin, blindly pets her hair.

She shrugs off the pain, straddles him, bending backwards, one arm wrapped around his strong shoulders securely, the other attempting to drag off her boot without moving off him. "Let's add car sex to the list of locations that only sound hot in theory," she informs him as they swap arms and exchange a peck before she lets him go to work on her other shoe. "I can't feel my legs and I don't mean in a good way."

"We could go somewhere else," Toby suggests with a pensive (or is it delightful?) hum though his body doesn't appear to be listening as his fingers drag down her spine, dipping into her back dimples, teasing below her pants and distracting her for a solid ten seconds. She doesn't realize that he has unhooked her bra until he retreats long enough for him to take it off and merely toss it aside. The warmth below her navel extends, spreads to the rest of her body, and watching him wet his mouth and move back in to leave a sloppy trail on her skin, she lets her eyelids flutter closed, her hand cradle his face. "I mean it," he continues, sounding _almost_ unbothered, like he isn't busy dropping a dozen open-mouthed kisses to her flushed chest. "Look at you… you are freezing…"

Sure.

If that's what he wants to call it.

"Yeah, no, we're halfway there already," she replies, catching the smirk he sends her inside her grasp, lightheaded at the way it instantly travels through her body until her blood knows nothing but this moment. She pulls herself together and pulls his belt through the buckle, eager to regain a semblance of control. He grunts at this, hands flying to her exposed waist, giving it a squeeze, steadying her or steadying himself, she can't tell. "We used to do this all the time. I'm not giving up now and letting eighteen-year-old me win against…well… _me_."

He chuckles, carefully lifting her off his thighs and laying her back down on the seat, hovering over her and she huffs her disapproval, arms curling around his back anyhow. "You're weird," he mutters, kisses her once, kisses her again and again and again, grins into her muffled, happy giggles, fingers locating the fly of her pants.

"I'm 'weird' and yet you're undressing me." She lifts her hips. "So, what does what make you?"

"A fool in love," he says easily, dragging pants and underwear down her legs, shoving his down to his knees. She tries to sit up again, meet him somewhere in the middle, seize the reins, climb (elegantly? _greedily_?) into his lap, but his hand on her stomach stops her short. Sparks are wide awake there, under his touch; she loves him like this, uninhibited, unrestrained and unapologetic in his hunger for her. Though just a _slight_ change of position would surely benefit them both…

"Probably a little stupid," he carries on as he gets comfortable on top of her, teeth first nibbling at her more than willing neck before he sucks her heated skin between his lips to soothe the bite and she is too damn old to still get visibly ( _embarrassingly_?) excited about hickeys in places no one but him will see. He lifts his palm from her stomach, replaces it with his mouth and Spencer squirms beneath him, her breath quickening in apprehension.

"A man with a type," he says, and she doesn't recall what it is that they were talking about, not when he is descending, not when he is kissing up her inner thigh like that, his stubble deliciously rough against her sensitive skin. She wriggles, desperate to be granted some friction, then gasps a moan of surprise at him swiftly shifting on top of her, his head disappearing between her legs, fingers and tongue making her toes curl up.

"Enjoying the Christmas spirit?" he remarks in a drunken mumble as his pretty face comes up for air; mostly to tease her, she assumes, because why the _hell_ is he still talking in the first place. She is watching him through hooded eyelids, nails raking over his scalp, breath coming in short pants. He nuzzles her inner thigh again, voice husky. "Or, you know, maybe…"

She doesn't get to find out what other pressing comparisons he has on his mind because, likely tired of denying them both, his head settles, hands holding her thighs open for him to recklessly _devour_ ; and in one fell swoop, she is keening, cheeks flushed from mild embarrassment and the unexpected force of his mouth too. Afterwards, when she is boneless and exhausted, still turning somersaults as she comes down from her high, she laughs a little and looks at him as he's staring at her, looks at him as he wipes his jaw and mouth on the back of his hand. He is extra attentive when they are like this, soothing her as she returns, legs falling from his shoulders, and then he is extra greedy too, letting his impatience take over them both as he pulls her to him by her foot, _just_ rough enough for her to emit an excited giggle.

"So," she starts before he is back on her, the length of him pleasantly pressing against her while he catches her mouth in a languid kiss. He moves like on the prowl, calculated and planned for: moves from the corner of her mouth to her jaw and then her neck, and _damn_ his fucking mouth, because his lips are leaving a trail of fire on their way to her ear, reigniting the flames he'd just helped extinguish. Mewling her appreciation regardless, she runs her fingers through his messy hair, tries again, "So…a fool in love, huh?"

"Yeah," he agrees distractedly, hands snaking between them, and she closes her eyes, bites down on her bottom lip, tilts up her hips in silent invitation. He takes the hint, hand cradling her head gently, and she wraps her arms around him. He says, mumbles, whispers, into her neck and into the skin of her cheek, "That's what I am. I'm—"

"…an idiot," Toby is despairingly babbling later as he rubs his eyes like in an attempt to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. "I'm an idiot. I'm _stupid_. I'm useless. And—and _selfish_!"

Spencer decides to let him have his brief moment of self-pity before interjecting as she puts her phone aside with a sigh and slips back into her bra and shirt. "Well…" she begins halfheartedly, picks imaginary dust off her pants. "I mean, _WebMD_ said we're fine. It's _BabyCenter_ that claims we aren't."

He flinches somewhat at her last sentence, either at the name of the magazine or the information it had helped provide; she isn't sure if the distinction matters. With his mouth a thin line of utter frustration at himself, his body shudders under the weight of an inaudible groan. He is still busy rubbing at his eyes and shaking his head when he says, "I'm really fucking sorry, Spence."

"Well, and I'm telling you that you shouldn't be. We've been going at it like…" Picking up her phone again to check the state of her hair and makeup in her front camera, she trails off. Dogs? Rabbits? Two people _madly_ in love who were forced apart by very, very stupid life choices and are now back together again? "It was bound to happen eventually."

"I could've pulled out."

"And _I_ could've taken my pill like a good, little girlfriend. I mean, that's literally my only job."

That finally makes him drop his palms from his eyes to give her a quiet look. They are quite the pair, the two of them; her and her fucked-up humor masked as an unfortunate coping mechanism and then him and his tendency to brood over everything and nothing at the same time, although never forgetting to leave some space to get offended and brood on _her_ behalf too. It's adorable.

Knight in shining armor and all.

Though, if she has to be honest, he isn't exactly looking the part at the moment. His belt is still unbuckled, fly only half-zipped, his shirt inside out after put back on in a hurry, his head lowered shamefully like he is expecting to be executed for the _terrible_ crime of coming inside his willing girlfriend. Like she had said: it's adorable.

"It was a joke," Spencer clarifies, ruffling his already really messy hair. "Come on, Tobes, this isn't the end of the world."

"Well, no, but it's not exactly a cause for celebration either," Toby responds dryly, leaning into her touch even after she retreats.

Surely, she thinks, surely she _should_ be reminded of her dorm room and just switch her nervous breakdown _then_ for his half-disguised uneasiness now; his total assuredness in their relationship _then_ for her total nonchalance about future plans possibly flushing down the toilet _now_ ; and one late period _then_ for one almost…well, clumps of cell if it's a Republican asking and a there-is-a-very-slight-chance-it-might-end-up-inside-her-oven baby if it's anyone else, really. What she thinks of instead is having to come to terms with her own mortality at age eight or nine. They'd attended some funeral, her family and her, back when funerals in Rosewood weren't as common as hipster restaurants with unprofitable concepts owned by trust fund millennials. A rather old, prominent Rosewood citizen had gone to bed one night and never woken up again the following morning. All in all, it was an utterly miserable affair. At the wake, amongst grieving neighbors playing pretend and whispers of secrecy being passed out because _of course_ even old Rosewood ladies had plenty of shit to hide in their closets, Ali had learned in from her seat beside her and dared her to go look at the body 'for at least a _whole_ minute'. She had even lifted her wrist, the one with the pink Barbie watch she so loved. _I'm gonna check_ _and I'll know if you cheat._

Having Alison declare Spencer a 'loser' or a 'baby' or a 'loser baby' was _way_ worse than all the horror movies Melissa would watch with Spencer lurking from the stairs, so Spencer had looked and Spencer had stared, and as her mind started playing tricks on her, her eyes watering up from her blatant refusal to blink, the drowsy lighting inside the church making the old woman's silent chest look like she was still breathing, she had thought, for a second or two, _oh my god. Oh my god, that's going to be me_.

She is going through the same now…well, in reverse and minus a cold, dead body to accentuate her fears. Life and death, death and life, and an acute awareness of her own fertility stubbornly squeezing itself between the area of her brain in charge of quoting literary classics in their native languages and the area of her brain in charge of jumping to conclusions like she is trying to win gold. Images of Melissa's hand on her stomach are slithering around, snake-like and dangerous, and images she hadn't seen but had had described to her in excruciating detail – of Aria puking her guts out at a falafel place; Aria leaking breast milk in a tedious meeting with her editor; Aria almost peeing herself on a daily basis during her last trimester; Aria casually leaving her phone in the fridge and packing the trash into the trunk to drive to Target with it without knowing why.

_Oh god_ , Spencer thinks. _Oh my god, that's gonna be me._

She purses her lips. "Let's stop at the drugstore before driving to my parents'. I'll grab Plan B."

"Good idea."

"I think we're safe, but you know… just in case."

"Just in case."

Twisting her mouth to the side, she plucks at his shirt until he gets the message, takes it off once more to turn it the right way—and yeah, she _stares_ , and thinks that they probably wouldn't even _be_ in this predicament if he didn't look like Captain America. "But honestly," Spencer continues eventually, "I'm not fully convinced my body _doesn't_ have its own way of dealing with possible intruders."

"' _Intruders_ '," he echoes flatly. She _knows_ he thinks it's funny because he thinks everything she says is funny but to his credit, he does a good job at hiding it.

"Sure, I mean, looking at the sheer size of my family, it's rather easy to conclude that we _are_ a fertile bunch, thanks to the whole Italian thing, and _you_ , your dad's family is fucking _Irish_ —"

He glances at her warily. "Are we doing stereotypes now?"

It's one of these stupid moments where Spencer, no matter how much they know each other and no matter how well she reads him normally, has absolutely no access to his mind. She stares up at his face, willing the blush away she feels creeping up her spine like fingernails, and responds, "No. I'm saying that we're a really fertile bunch and if Melissa's cursed uterus can house Satan's spawn, it's not unreasonable to assume that mine could produce its own homemade baby."

_Ah_ , and there's that pesky mask slipping: his mouth twitches slightly before he emits a barking laugh that she knows he feels bad about the second he decides to let it go.

"But I'm a chain-smoker on antidepressants. Any potential baby would be flushed out with my next period." She nonchalantly motions between her thighs with a flick of her wrist to highlight her (poor choice of) wording, then briefly considers lighting a cigarette as well, but the ashtray in the front is already brimming over with cigarette butts, old gum and candy wrappers, and the whole car smells like sex and nicotine anyhow. How appropriate, she thinks. That's their entire life: sex and nicotine. Sometimes booze and crippling debt too. Regardless, she settles on fixing her appearance again, reapplying her lipstick and combing through her bangs, as she says, "And if it didn't, all I'm saying is that it wouldn't be…the worst thing in the world?"

On his stunned silence, she hastily clears her throat, and adds, a bit _too_ defensively to be brushed off afterwards, "I'm not saying I want a baby right this second and I'm ninety-nine percent sure that I'm mostly speaking from a place where it feels as though everyone around me is popping out kids while I'm busy popping Zoloft…" She averts her eyes further, suddenly insanely taken by Emily's latest Instagram post showing off her Bullmastiff puppy perched under her decorated Christmas tree. Next to the puppy, Spencer can make out a woman's hand on the floor, holding a squeaky toy. _Huh._ She shrugs it off and quickly rambles, moving onto Mona's profile because there's nothing quite like Mona that calms her nerves and channels her nervous energy into utter frustration, "And part of that ninety-nine percent certainty is _heavily_ influenced by...by all _this_. Us moving in together, the house, and my stupid biological clock demanding we _fill_ that house."

Poor Toby. His expression remains unreadable though the turmoil inside his gaze is something she can almost _taste_. She is sure she is going to give him whiplash one of those days. Poor Toby, indeed; there he is sitting, innocent and unassuming, still in the process of somehow attempting peace with the fact that he has to walk the same physical plane as her parents right after buying their youngest emergency contraception and here she is, dumping primal urges on him another, non-hormonal and non-recently-fucked version of her would be ashamed of. Even now, she is feeling her face turn pink with impending embarrassment.

And again, who does he think he _is_ , anyway? She wouldn't _be_ in this predicament if her love for him didn't regularly turn her into this stupid, optimistic fool.

"Look, the issue here is that I really, _really_ wanna do everything at once right now. Every, every _adult_ thing, every _grownup_ thing," she says because if _she_ has to suffer the consequences of his inability to pull out, then he should be suffering a lot more than he currently seems to be. "And I don't know what I'm running _from_ or where I'm trying to run _to_ , and I probably need to figure that out someday…but I'm…this is me dropping hints. I'm dropping hints that I might possibly be warming up to certain ideas in the future. In the _distant_ future. But still. I'm all warmed up."

He blinks at her, so she tries, "Like a cake. Ready to be eat…ready to be _enjoyed_. Although I'm up for that too." The corners of his mouth twitch again and he grins against his better judgment. She glares at him accusingly. "Oh, good. I thought you were having a stroke. You realize you've completely missed your mark, right? You were supposed to _say_ something about five lines ago. Instead you're letting me make an idiot out of myself by _babbling_."

Finally awake, he scoots closer to her, hand on hers to lower her phone and force her to look at him. "Well, I happen to like when you babble." His thumb strokes over her cheekbone, his eyes fixated on hers. "No, it's… it's a delicate topic for us, Spence. I didn't want to scare you off by saying something hasty."

"That's great. But you're not making it un-delicate by walking on eggshells around me or letting me go on a crazy monologue where I feel like Melissa justifying herself after poking holes into Wren's condoms."

"She did _what_?"

"It's a theory my mom and I have." She gazes at him as he strokes down her jaw, thumb poking at the cleft in her chin. "Well, the stage is yours, Mr. Cavanaugh. Come on, be hasty. Or tell me to stop warming up so that we can get this over with."

"I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think about it. Like, _a lot_."

She takes him in, lost in the softness of his voice, the tranquil and all but dream-like veil settling over his features, and bites down on his finger once it reaches her mouth. "How many?"

"What?"

"How many?"

"Like what? Kids?" Somewhat sheepishly, she lifts one shoulder to signal surrender. " _Oh_. Don't know. Two, I think. You?"

"One," she concedes instantly, then, after a beat reserved for mulling it over, "Although I might be open to negotiation. Depending on how smoothly things go the first time."

Toby chuckles quietly, goes in to replace his finger with his mouth in a kiss so gentle and sweet she can feel it tug and push and pull at her heart. "I love watching you with Oscar," he eventually admits like he is admitting to a well-kept obsession, addiction, something he isn't proud to have done but can't keep himself from doing either because he doesn't know _how_. It tugs at her heart again; it doesn't feel as nice as before. "I should've said something but it…it _is_ a delicate subject for us, Spence. I don't want you to feel like you owe me something. Least of all a family. I don't want you to think that this is something I actively desire because if it doesn't happen, you'll be crushed-"

"And what about you?"

"What _about_ me?" He nuzzles her nose, drawing back only to look at her better. "The only thing I want more than _anything_ is spend the rest of my life with you. We've already established that."

She smiles because how could she not, and in this moment, love isn't butterflies fluttering inside her throat or ecstatic birds chirping songs inside her stomach. It's unwavering reassurance, _faith_ , it's excitement, it's hoping without knowing with certainty and knowing without having to hope at all, that she will love this silly man forever. She drops her voice for comedic effect and means what she says when she says, "We'd be great parents though."

"Oh, yeah. Absolutely. No doubt about that."

"The other day," she tells him as she plays with his fingers, "the other day I heard someone call their kid Severus—as in _Severus Snape_ —and the day before _that_ , I heard someone call their kid Daenerys—as in _Khaleesi_ …I mean, that's our current competition. How bad could we possibly be?"

Again, he laughs, shaking his head at her. "Raising kids is not a competition."

"Of course not. But if it _was_ , we'd totally win," Spencer answers matter-of-factly, the corner of her mouth curling up at his subsequent laughter. "We'd be, like, the _hot_ parents at PTA meetings. Show up like a power couple. And I'd, y'know, bake something delicious, and everyone would be _insanely_ jealous because nothing they make will ever taste as good as _my_ cake and-"

"Agreed."

A beat passes until she fully comprehends the very suggestive undertone in his retort. "Oh god, _Mr. Cavanaugh_ ," she reprimands with a fake gasp of pure shock and a playful shove to his chest which he takes like a champ. "So Aria _was_ right about you. I've tainted you beyond saving."

"What can I say? Guilty as charged." He shrugs, casual-like and unaffected. "I've been to juvie. I'm a bad boy, y'know. Kind of a big deal."

She stares at him from under her eyelashes, tilting up her chin when he leans closer and closer, delightfully trapping her against the side of the door. "Mmm…a _very_ big deal, I'd say."

This time, he laughs right into her mouth, the vibrations of it making her dizzy. "Thank you."

"I'm kind of a bad girl too… I've been to jail…" He hums his appreciation or agreement, maybe his hunger into her neck, hands going on a languid journey all over her body. Some tiny part of her that isn't yet entirely consumed by Act 2 of _A Very Weird Foreplay_ wonders how much time they have left until her mother notices and starts leaving passive-aggressive voice messages on both their phones. "I'm an ex-addict too, by the by. A ticking timebomb. The people in this town once thought I killed someone. Multiple someones, actually."

"Hmmm… sounds like we're perfect for each other then."

"It really does." She finds herself grateful for his lack of composure leading him to not properly dressing himself earlier because she manages to shove down his pants with a lot more ease than before. "Might take a while to make responsible, non-smoking, non-drinking parents out of us."

His fingers are under her shirt and in her pants and everywhere at once. "We could practice."

"I agree. Practice makes perfect and all." Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, she barely stifles her giggle at his hands tickling her now bare waist, his head immediately dipping to caress and taste newly exposed skin. She hisses at _his_ teeth enthusiastically biting and nibbling and claiming and idly pats his cheek. Determined to use her last shred of sobriety and rationale until they too slip from her grasp, she exhales a happy sigh and says, "Please pull out this time."

"Yes, ma'am."

At her parents' Christmas party, her mom is crushing ice with so much vigor that Spencer thinks she must be picturing Wren's head in its place. Said enemy of the state has shown up, of course, trailing behind Melissa like her personal Ken doll, tie matching the shade of her skin-tight dress to properly enunciate the barely visible bulge of her stomach. He is practicing his usual routine of oozing slime to make the weaseling about a bit easier by the time Spencer returns to the party from the bathroom; stood in a semi-circle in-between Melissa, Aunt Lola and their grandmother, he is giving out medical advice that Spencer isn't fully certain he is qualified for.

"I can't believe she _brought_ him here," her mother hisses, furious, when Spencer walks over.

"Well, they're having a baby," Spencer remarks dryly, then scowls at her mother slapping away her hand from the plate of appetizers. "You can't expect her to show up alone. I brought Toby."

Mom snatches the bruschetta out of her grasp. "Quit trying to eat the food. It's for the guests."

"And what am I, exactly?""

"The difference between Wren and Toby is," her mother carries on like she didn't just order her youngest to starve, wiping her hands on the dishwashing towel and picking up her glass of wine again. _God, it's like looking in a mirror_ , Spencer thinks, aghast, as she watches her mom proceed to down it with gusto. She can't wait to see Dr. Mizrahi and tell her all about it (to make one or five excuses for her own behavior, obviously). "The difference is we _like_ Toby and being in the same room with him doesn't make me contemplate sticking my head in the oven."

Spencer doesn't necessarily _need_ her parents' approval for anything (yes, she does), least of all for her love life (that one is true, at least), but she would be lying if she claimed that little remark didn't leave her with a nonchalant air of smugness. Perhaps a proper, totally healthy amount of smugness. A world of smugness. She catches Toby's gaze inside her own across the room from where he is standing and talking with (read: held hostage by) her father who is showing him the _Apple Watch_ around his wrist with a look of utter puzzlement plastered across his features. Like the first caveman to witness fire. She shoots him a timid, apologetic smile he reciprocates with a casual smirk and shrug of his own.

"You could make yourself useful instead of making eyes at each other."

"And you could stop drinking," Spencer suggests politely as she leans against the counter. Her mom sends her a pointed look that Spencer decides doesn't look like hers face when Aria throws her pack of cigarettes onto her back porch. "I don't want to make small talk with your politician friends. Surviving Election Day this year was already depressing enough. At least let me escape the harsh reality of a doomed future on Christmas."

"It's December 19th."

"Oh my god, _Ron_." Lola has made her way over to them to join the exasperated mother-daughter duo at the kitchen island with a grin so wide (and ridiculous) that it breathes some much-needed _life_ into her typically very doll-like features. Aunt Lola – Aunt _Rosella_ , actually, though Spencer doesn't recall how she had ended up with a handle like Lola, only that it involved Grandpa and his affinity for absurdly cutesy nicknames – and that thick ( _fake_ ) Jersey accent she had picked up from her ex-husband or the one before that. Her blonde hair, courtesy of whatever stylist she had found herself now, is all piled up like a beauty queen, an unskilled man's drawing of Farrah Fawcett, brown eyes ringed with glitter and blue, a smear of red lipstick on her pouty mouth. If she hadn't somehow managed to specialize in Family Law, she would have likely been involved in a pyramid scheme. Aunt Lola, though a bit on the ditzy side and her mother's polar opposite, is pleasant enough however; definitely one of Mom's nicer sisters. Aunt Carlotta is the one that had always reminded Spencer of Melissa, Grandma rarely ever forgetting to point out that _that's great, Ronnie, but Carla's a judge now, did you hear?_

_Does that make me the_ Ronnie _of_ our _family_ , Spencer wonders, instantly scrunches up her face into a grimace. At Lola's awful perfume hitting her nose, of course. There is nothing horrifying about realizing that you are your own mother. Nothing at all. She is the _queen_ of self-awareness.

"You never told me that Melissa's fiancé was a _doctor_ ," Lola sighs half-accusingly, seemingly unbothered by Spencer's inner turmoil.

Then: _fiancé_.

"Wow. That escalated fast," Spencer mutters.

Her mother is much better at hiding her reaction-slash-surprise and quickly produces a smile at her younger sister, humming her acknowledgement but unable to come up with a response.

Aunt Lola doesn't mind too much. "I mean, he is just _ah-mazing_. Told him that I'm having this burning sensation in my face whenever I turn my head like so—" She shows them and proceeds to emit a painful gasp, manicured hand flying up to dab at her cheek carefully. "And all he had to do is look at my neck for a sec to realize it might be a herniated disk. Just like that. That man is going places, I'm tellin' you. And then the most _ah-mazing_ thing happened: he had a talk with Mama and convinced her that she has to go see someone about her blood pressure."

"Oh god, that really is _ah-mazing_ ," Spencer echoes in the same excited tone of voice, promptly earning her a glare from her mom. Well, she probably deserved that.

"Spence, honey, how have you been? Look at you, all growed up."

Mom keeps smiling that fake non-smile. "Not as much as she thinks."

"Turn around, baby, let me look at you. Oh, such a fierce, little Veronica, aren't you?" Clasping her hands together, Lola shakes her head a bit wistfully. "Except for the nose, I think. That must be a Hastings thing."

Spencer blinks at her, then turns her head to blink at her mother. "Remember when you wanted me to be useful? How can I be useful again?"

Before she can leave Mom to fend for herself, Lola suddenly lunges across the island separating them to get a firm hold on her hand. "Melissa told me about the pills, hun, and I just wanna say, don't worry about it, 'kay? Mental illness is _nothing_ to be ashamed of," she purrs, eyes big and brown and earnest as she squeezes her niece's hand in reassurance. "'Cuz after my divorce—"

"Which one?"

Lola chooses not to hear her remark. "—I had to take Xanax, too, and it's nothing shameful at all. Therapy's good. _Ah-mazing_ , even. You can come talk to me _whenever_ you want, all right?"

_Inhale positivity_ , Spencer tells herself silently in order to stop thinking about doing something completely warranted and rational, like starting a physical argument with Melissa in the middle of the crowded living room that she would end up losing either way because Melissa is both an infamous biter _and_ hair-puller. _Exhale negative thoughts. Inhale positivity. Exhale negative th_ —

"Thank you, Lola," she hers herself say, idly patting her aunt's hand before managing to shove it off. "That's _ah-mazing_ advice."

"Oh, you're welcome, honey. You're so very welcome."

Disgruntled, she unceremoniously takes a cookie without asking, nibbling at it as she abandons her so-called mother and squeezes her way through another onslaught of partygoers. It takes an enormous level of expertise, but luckily, she is rather successful in wading through a particularly annoying brand of middle-aged men guffawing at baby boomer jokes without being stopped or roughly pulled aside to poke some 'lighthearted fun' at her ridiculous political views like _equal pay_ or _affordable housing_. Behind the group of elephants masquerading as donkeys, a bunch of Hastings cousins are debating freedom of speech, the one she knows is majoring in Economics sponsoring a couple of _let-them-eat-cake-_ like comments, totally straight-faced too. As Spencer passes them, she catches another one – the _other_ black sheep on that side of the holy family tree because she had dared pick a Liberal Arts major – exclaim, "Are you fucking serious right now, Kyle," and Spencer wonders how much flack she is going to have to take for her _Nasty Woman_ t-shirt or the short-haired, inked 'roommate' she had brought as her plus-one. She quickly ducks behind some guy she can't place (the brown curls indicating he must be one of Mom's relatives) who is laughing at an _Onion_ article on his phone in order to avoid being seen by Nana Hastings making her rounds like an underpaid prison guard, then she shrugs helplessly at Grandma like she would _really_ love to come over and talk to her about life but there's _so_ much going on…

When she arrives at her father's side, he is entertaining (read: bribing) a couple of kids. She has no idea who they are. "Dad, where's Toby?"

"Ah, Spencer," her father says, ruffling one of the kids' hair who is too engrossed in the former's _Apple Watch_ to give a damn. "You can't leave your mother alone with Lola. They're just going to fight again."

"Mom's a big girl. Where's Toby?"

"Have you seen what Lauren's wearing?" He looks genuinely confused. "What does that mean, anyway, 'nasty woman'? I don't think your nana is going to like it."

"Where have you been?" she questions disbelievingly, then changes her mind. "Whatever. I'm not doing this right now. Have you seen Toby?"

"I think he went to the bathroom. Left me alone to deal with my new watch." Her dad chuckles, his laugh deep and an echo of one too many drinks. "And well, now Noah here's configuring it for me so that I can _see_ what's on it. Isn't it crazy how skilled these kids are with computers?"

"It's not a computer," Noah corrects, tongue sticking out between his lips in concentration.

"It's not a computer!" Dad repeats and laughs, ruffling his hair again. Noah leans out of reach.

Deciding that the best course of action is to disengage as quickly as she can unless she is up for explaining Cloud computing to her dad, Spencer whirls around, the chorus of _excuse-me-ouch-excuse-me-ow_ flowing from her mouth largely unheard and ignored as Uncle Russell (who she suspects isn't even a _genuine_ uncle, considering that no one so far had fully managed to explain to her how he fit into their overly complicated family tree) starts drunkenly belting _O Come All Ye Faithful_ , Nana Hastings immediately pulling a displeased grimace, wooden cane repeatedly hitting the floor like that will persuade him to shut his mouth. Spencer paves herself a makeshift road through the dense jungle of awkward reunions ("I haven't seen you in _ages_ ," she hears one voice point out in excitement and someone else replies, "Oh, I've been travelling," and Spencer wonders: rehab, psych ward or the ever-so-ominous _health resort_?), awkward tension ("…well, and now the IRS is investigating us for no goddamn reason, and I don't know how to tell Neveah that we can't go to Disney this year," someone laments and is instantly received by overlapping murmurs of pseudo-politeness) and even more awkward, sociopathic politician small talk ("You can't say things like that out in the open," one suit whispers and another one answers, "I'm not saying that I _like_ the guy, I'm just saying that I like his honesty").

She is balancing on the verge of frustration (that, if she absolutely _has_ to be truthful, _does_ look a bit like a juvenile pout ready to take over her face) by the time she has circled the living room and even briefly peeked inside the dining room (where Lauren is kissing her 'roommate'; good for her) and her father's office (where Papa Hastings has seemingly decided to take a short nap on the leather couch; good for him too). Spencer is about to get her phone from her coat upstairs and just _text_ Toby when she suddenly hears her name down the hall, close to the front door.

"Toby?"

"Come over here. I gotta show you something."

Smiling, she follows the call of his voice impulsively, bouts of tension rolling off her when she finally spots him, hands in his pockets, standing by the door so casually like he had been waiting for her this whole time. She steps closer, still a little confused, eyebrows drawn together, and—

"Mistletoe," he notes like rehearsed and it occurs to her that he maybe has as he innocently tilts up his chin, blue eyes twinkling with mischief, just how she likes them best. "Isn't it funny how we keep meeting like this? I'm really starting to think you're doing it on purpose."

She laughs, shoves at his chest. "Well, you know what they say. Don't disappoint Baby Jesus."

"Or Santa."

"Or Santa."

Lazily, she raises on her tiptoes to reach him, brushes her mouth against his softly before giving up any and all pretenses and claiming it, kissing away the rest of the evening, kissing away the rest of the world. "Have I ever told you that I hate my family?" she inquiries, words half-muffled by his mouth still moving with hers.

"You might have mentioned it once or twice."

His hands tangling into her hair, he licks into her mouth, draws her bottom lip between his teeth, knowingly eliciting a low moan from her throat (that makes him _smirk_ in an especially arrogant way and she would have huffed if she were able to). Aware that they ought to stop before starting something they can't finish, she hums, pressing one last kiss to his lips firmly, sinks back to the floor, her hands planted on his chest. He exhales to moderate himself and she grins, tracing the shape of his mouth with her forefinger. _Who's smirking now?_

"Also," she goes on, nonchalant, because perhaps it's still bothering her, "I think I'm _literally_ my mother."

"Not necessarily a bad thing," he comments after a brief pause in which he brushes a ringlet of hair behind her ear, the other hand coming to a rest on her waist. "She's a nice person. And this is better than that one time you were freaking out because you were convinced that you're your sister."

"You're right," she agrees, nodding. "Nobody wants to be Melissa. Not even Melissa."

Behind them, Nana Hastings is hobbling down the hall with so much energy that Spencer half-expects her to stumble. Fortunately, she doesn't, but poor Nana; something must have obviously set her off. She is spluttering vulgarities under her breath she would have never dared to _whisper_ aloud just ten years ago as she limbs past. From the living room, Spencer can hear Uncle Russell singing _God Rest Ye Merry, Gentleman_. Nana scowls as an answer to their matching expressions of confusion, and announces, "He has a _terrible_ singing voice."

"Yeah, he does, doesn't he," Spencer replies. "Where are you going, Nana? Do you need help?"

"I want to know who even invited him. _Son of a bitch_. I could never stand his ugly face. Never liked his mother either," Nana says and proceeds to glare at the wall, knuckles turning white on her death grip on the cane. Spencer throws an apologetic glance at Toby as she unravels herself from the comfort of his arms. He doesn't look as disturbed as she had felt when Nana Hastings first started sprouting…well, whatever _this_ is, really. Dementia, most likely. Alzheimer's, if her gene pool decides to be especially forthcoming to her.

Nana exhales a sigh, drops her stern look and asks, "So where are the kids?"

One innocent question and she is taken back to some hours prior, shifting awkwardly under the eyes of the drugstore clerk mustering their purchase –a pack of cigarettes, Plan B, _Wrigley's_ and protective hand lotion – with what was undoubtedly mere boredom and anger at being disturbed by customers while watching _Home Alone_ on his MacBook but had felt like scrutiny and intense judgment. Beside her, Toby clears his throat soundly, perhaps wondering how safe and effective Plan B actually is.

"Which kids, Nana?" Spencer eventually counters but all Nana does is blink at her a bit blankly.

"Mrs. Hastings," Toby interjects, reaching for Nana's hand that is firmly closed around her two hearing aids. "Don't you want to put these in?"

" _My hearing aids_ ," Nana exclaims, joyful, as if she had been looking for them everywhere. "I'll put them in. Silly me!"

Once she has regained her sense of hearing – much to her dismay, however; Uncle Russell has switched to _Deck the Hall_ , and by the sounds of it, Lola is happily (flirtatiously?) giggling away at his dance moves – Spencer tries the same question. Nana raises what is left of her eyebrows and responds, "What do you mean? Melissa and Spencer, of course. I brought gifts."

Spencer feels her face fall. "Nana, I'm—"

"Oh, they're in bed," Toby interrupts as tenderly as he can, gifting her one of these trademarked Toby smiles that grandparents seem to fawn over. As predicted, Nana smiles back. "It's late and kids shouldn't stay up that long, right?"

"Right," Nana answers and nods. "Parties aren't a place for children. Especially when that ugly bastard is singing. Your father and I will just have to come over again tomorrow then."

Without missing a beat, Toby retorts, "Yeah, of course. The girls will be over the moon. Thanks for being so thoughtful, Mom."

"Yes, yes, but don't tell your brother, you hear me? I can't handle Carol's _wailing_ just because I didn't get _their_ brat anything." Affectionately stroking over Toby's cheek and pursing her lips at the light stubble she discovers there, Nana directs her focus back to Spencer. "Happy birthday, dear. You don't look a _day_ over thirty."

On Toby's gaze, Spencer forces herself to a smile. "Thank you, Doris. It's a special one."

But Doris loses interest and they lose her again though for a much nicer reason this time. Papa Hastings makes an unexpected appearance in the doorway to her father's office and the familiar scuffing of his slippers against the floor work like a fucking trigger. Nana's eyes light up in an instant and then, no word of goodbye spoken, she is off, whirling around and hobbling over to Papa as fast as her frail, little body will allow her. Stood by the wall, they watch her grandparents greet each other so lovingly like Papa has just returned to her after months at war. He smiles at her, lifting her hand to his mouth to brush a quick kiss to it and she laughs at him, a girlish laugh coming from somewhere within. Spencer briefly asks herself whether Nana even _knows_ , on a conscious level and all, who Papa _is_ or if she merely remembers the love she had for him once upon a time. Then wonders if Papa cares that there could be a difference. Wonders if she should be doing the same instead of stewing over someone mistaking her for _Ronnie_ Hastings… _again_.

"So," she says, tugging at Toby's shirt to make him look at her, "is this what you were picturing when you said you wanna spend the rest of your life with me?"

"Hm, more or less?" Toby answers casually, his kiss to her temple vibrating with the aftershocks of an entertained chuckle when she makes an unimpressed face. "Except you said that you're 'literally your mother', so I suppose you're gonna look less like Doris and more like…like your other grandmother."

"Silvana."

"Silvana," he repeats. "I tried to talk to her earlier, but I think she never forgave me for stepping on her foot back at your cousin's wedding when we were in high school."

"Doubt she remembers. She just hates everyone. Don't take it personally." She glances at Nana and Papa Hastings, the latter shrugging off his vest and carefully placing it around the former's shoulders. " _Ugh_. Look at them. It's almost disgusting."

"I think it's sweet." A gentle smile strikes root on his face at Nana planting a kiss on Papa's cheek. "What, are you saying you don't want me to kiss you when we're old and wrinkly?"

"No, feel free to kiss me anyway. If you want to traumatize our future grandchildren, that is."

"Aren't you putting a little too much pressure on our future children?"

She scowls. " _Child_."

"Aren't you putting a little too much pressure on our future _child_?" Toby corrects himself albeit in a teasing tone of voice. "What if they don't want kids?"

"Well, sucks to be them," she replies, moving to hold his arm between both of hers. "But if they are anything like us, they'll have several birth control 'mishaps' of their own."

He has that guilty expression on his face again; she almost wants to giggle, then decides against it. He sounds defensive when he counters, "This was literally the first time."

"Okay, what about college?"

"This was literally the _second_ time."

Nana Hastings has moved on from kiss-attacking her husband to whispering in his ear. Spencer can't make out what her grandmother is whispering, of course, but reckons that it must yet again be something _sickeningly_ sweet since Papa blushes and proceeds to laugh in a way that is eerily reminiscent of her father.

She turns her head to look at Toby and pull a semi-disgusted grimace. He just kisses her.

In a couple of hours, Melissa will decide that now is the right time and place to throw a massive fit over Mom allegedly not supporting her enough and they will hiss at each other like two stray cats fighting over fish out on the snow-covered back porch, and Dad will send Spencer there to intervene, and none of the party guests will accurately decipher what is going on but, of course, they will stage whisper to each other regardless, making big eyes and making up bigger rumors all while Aunt Lola clinks glasses with Uncle Russell, hunting down Husband Number Four, unaware of his tendency to invest in horrible business models and go bankrupt every other year.

And in a few days, Spencer and Toby will lay down under their plastic Christmas tree, conjuring some five or six excuses for the 'plastic' part of it, their new projector (courtesy of reckless online shopping) pointed at the last, unoccupied wall proudly presenting _It's a Wonderful Life_ and the wallpaper underneath causing the actors' faces to look weirdly bumpy. They will drink their hot chocolate and she will put her head on his chest, hand going up and down his ribcage, maybe stroking over his heartbeat, and the last thing on her mind before losing her fight against sleep will be of absolute serenity. Everything will be golden in that place between awake and asleep; everything will feel like it has fallen into place. Where it belongs. Where _they_ belong.

In several weeks, she will wake up the metallic taste of blood inside her mouth, cramps shaking her lower back and abdomen, and multiple, red blotches on her sweatpants, and after an annoyed look into her period app, she will be flooded by a strange, unidentifiable emotion of hollowness for a fleeting second (of nausea) too long, push it off as swiftly as it had overcome her. Then at breakfast, they will talk money, bills and available funds and try to figure out the next however long the house is going to take, and at breakfast, they will read the elegant wedding invitation Hanna has sent out, and exchange a _well-we-gotta-do-what-we-gotta-go_ shrug with one another. Later, he will drive to his office, and she will drive to hers, and on the radio, a YouTuber-turned-singer will lament about breaking hearts in short, black dresses and all the depressing guys she has dated, and Spencer will hurriedly put out her cigarette before putting _on_ a hurried smile for the cop that has stopped her for speeding.

And some few or many months later, they will book a last-minute trip to Hawaii that they can't afford, laze around at the beach and share the same beach towel while sharing love drunk kisses instead of going through the needlessly verbose manuscript Aria has asked them to _please_ have a critical look at. Back home, Spencer will rest her forehead against not-a-baby Oscar's as they are slow-dancing at Alison's birthday party; and laugh so hard until she starts crying at awfully stupid stories from the past that Hanna will choose to rehash over her fifth cocktail she is nursing at the gay bar that Emily will take them to so they can meet Cody and her wife; and back home, she will barely be stopped from strangling Mona at a boutique that Hanna has picked, and after shrugging off Em's pacifying hand on her shoulder, she will huff and puff her frustration, hiding herself away inside the fitting room with Aria, Emily and Alison, and for the first time in almost a decade, the four of them will feel like a united force again and not like four people that cannot seem to cut through the trauma bond they share. During therapy, Dr. Mizrahi will look at her in an all but motherly way, warmth creeping onto her features, and praise her progress, her process, and Toby will engulf her inside his arms when she steps outside the building, eyes much redder though much clearer than usual too, and he will kiss the top of her head and tell her how proud he is, _so proud, baby, so proud_.

And in a couple of years…well, who knows. Maybe they will finally move into the house, throw a BBQ for their friends like a super _boring_ suburban couple, her sponsoring stuff she has bought ready and will pretend she has made herself, him being forced to act like he gets along with the men of the group. Perhaps there will be an intrigued cat watching the gathering from the upstairs window, her fuzzy face pressed against the glass curiously. Perhaps there will be a _gigantic_ dog, running in circles around everyone and trying to entice a game of tag out of Em's confused not-really-a-puppy-anymore. Maybe Toby will stop listening to Caleb's business idea (a restaurant that sells cookie dough but, like, _it's totally edible and safe_ ) and shoot her an entertained glance across the yard just as she is busy assuring Hanna that there is nothing between her pearly-white teeth. Maybe she will catch it inside her own gaze and maybe she will feel an inexplicable surge of warmth inside her stomach. Maybe, in that very moment, she will want to want it then, watch the best of them both, watch their _love_ materialize and take form in someone else. And perhaps, in that moment, Alison's voice from a lifetime ago will echo inside her mind – _You have to look at it for at least a_ whole _minute_ – as she decides to face her wants (and fears) head-on. Maybe, in that moment, it will all be worth it: the pain, the cold, the separation; the tears and heartbreak.

And fifty or sixty or seventy years down the line, they will sit and look back at the crazy (stupid and happy) life they have had and still laugh and love as fiercely as today, as tomorrow and the day after that. In Boston or Worcester or Chicago or someplace new, they will hold hands like Nana and Papa are currently doing, and when Toby whirls and twirls her around with ease, she will think she is going to be eighteen forever, and when she glances up at him in awe, what he'll remember is the day she had come to his door, French words and her bleeding heart as a present.

Toby nudges her temple with his forehead, gives her waist a squeeze. "You're awfully quiet all of the sudden," he remarks. "What's going on in there, hm?"

Spencer tilts her head to smile at him. "Just thinking," she not-answers, leaving him with a kind of dumbfounded expression. She pats his chest. "C'mon, let's get some food. I'm _starving_."

An eyebrow raised in disbelief, he hums, not satisfied with her non-response though seemingly concluding that it can't be a pressing matter – she _is_ normally far too obvious about her misery, after all, and never has it looked like the genuinely happy smile plastered across her face at this moment. He follows her, intertwining their fingers as she carves a way for them through various groups of people.

Behind them, by the stairs and mostly to Aunt Lola perched on the last step with a glass of wine, Uncle Russell sings _Silent Night_ into his makeshift microphone.

Nana stares from afar. Then she tugs at Papa's hand until they both join in.

_Oh_ , Spencer thinks idly. _Oh, that's gonna be us, isn't it?_

And really, it's not as bad a thought as she had anticipated.


End file.
